Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 8:4 (2017) ► pp.520–541

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Order in disorder

Audience responses and political rhetoric in speeches from the second round of the 2012 French presidential election

 | Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana (UNITEC)
 | University of York
Published online: 19 January 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.8.4.03led
Abstract
Recent research has established that Japanese political oratory and audience behaviour (Bull, Peter & Ofer Feldman. 2011. Invitations to affiliative audience responses in Japanese political speeches. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 30(2): 158–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Feldman, Ofer & Peter Bull. 2012. Audience affiliation in Japanese political speeches. Language and Dialogue, 21, 375–397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) are fundamentally different to those found in British political speeches (Heritage, John & David Greatbatch. 1986. Generating applause: A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology 921: 110–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). To further develop these cross-cultural analyses of political rhetoric, speaker-audience interaction was analysed in ten speeches by the two second-round candidates in the 2012 French presidential elections (François Hollande; Nicolas Sarkozy). Analogous to British speeches, French speeches were characterised by “implicit” affiliative response invitations and asynchronous speaker-audience interaction, in contrast to Japanese “explicit” invitations and synchrony. These results were interpreted in terms of Hofstede, Geert. 2001. Culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar individualism-collectivism cultural dimensions. Dissimilarities in audience responses between the two candidates were also identified and discussed. The analysis of cross-cultural differences continues to reveal the intricate differences between societies, and ensures academic understanding on rhetoric is not boxed into crude universal rules.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • Cross-cultural Analysis
      • Analysis of rhetoric
      • Speaker-audience synchrony
      • Synchrony
      • Isolated responses
    • Inter-speaker analysis
      • Audience responses
      • Collective and composite responses
      • Isolated responses and synchrony
      • Verbal responses
  • Discussion
    • Conclusions and wider implications
  • Note
  • References
References (36)
References
Atkinson, John Maxwell. 1983. Two devices for generating audience approval: A comparative study of public discourse and text. In K. Ehlich & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), Connectedness in sentence, text and discourse (pp. 199–236). Tilburg, Netherlands: Tilburg Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984a. Our masters’ voices. London & New York: Methuen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984b. Public speaking and audience responses: Some techniques for inviting applause. In J. M. Atkinson & J. C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 370–409). Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bull, Peter. 2000. Do audiences only applaud claptrap in political speeches? An analysis of invited and uninvited applause. Social Psychological Review 21: 32–41.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Invited and uninvited applause in political speeches. British Journal of Social Psychology 451: 563–578. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Claps and Claptrap: The Analysis of Speaker-Audience Interaction in Political Speeches. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1): 473–492. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bull, Peter & Ofer Feldman. 2011. Invitations to affiliative audience responses in Japanese political speeches. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 30(2): 158–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bull, Peter & Karolis Miskinis. 2014. Whipping it up! An analysis of audience responses to political rhetoric in speeches from the 2012 American presidential elections. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Retrieved from: [URL]
Bull, Peter & Merel Noordhuizen. 2000. The mistiming of applause in political speeches. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 191: 275–294. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bull, Peter & Pam Wells. 2002. By invitation only? An analysis of invited and uninvited applause. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 211: 230–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Capone, Alessandro. 2010. Barack Obama’s South Carolina speech. Journal of Pragmatics 42(11): 2964–2977. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Capone, Alessandro, &, Jacob L. Mey. 2016. Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carbaugh, Donal. 2012. Ethnography of communication. In L. Monaghan, J. E. Goodman & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication: Essential readings (2nd ed.) (pp. 245–248). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E. 1993. Booing: The anatomy of a disaffiliative response. American Sociological Review 581: 110–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cole, Alistair. 1998. French politics and society. New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dalton, Russell J. 2013. Citizen politics: Public opinion and political parties in advanced industrial democracies (6th ed.). CQ Press: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feldman, Ofer & Peter Bull. 2012. Audience affiliation in Japanese political speeches. Language and Dialogue, 21, 375–397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp.41–58). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John & David Greatbatch. 1986. Generating applause: A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology 921: 110–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hofstede, Geert. 2001. Culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede, & Michael Minkov. 2010. Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Howarth, David J., & Georgios Varouxakis. 2003. Contemporary France: an introduction to French politics and society. New York: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, Yan. 2015. Pragmatics (2nd ed.). New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, Elinor Ochs. 1976. The Universality of conversational postulates, Language in Society 5(1): 67–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mey, Jacob L. 2016. Pragmatics seen through the prism of society. In A. Capone and J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 15–42). Switzerland: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. 1994. Involvement and joking in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 22(3–4): 409–430. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. A theory of humor in interaction, Journal of Literary Theory 3(2): 261–283.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pan, Yuling. 2011. Methodological issues in East Asian politeness research. In D. Z. Kádár & S. Mills (Eds.), Politeness in East Asia (pp. 71–97). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rhodan, Maya. 2016, October 10. The Debate audience laughed, cheered and clapped –again. Retrieved from [URL]
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Gail Jefferson. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4): 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
“Sarkozy, bon orateur politique (Copé).” 2011, January 06. Retrieved from [URL]
Urban, Mark. 2014, April 24. Nationalism looks set to remain on trend in France. Retrieved from [URL]
Waugh, Linda R., 1995. Reported speech in journalistic discourse: The relation of function and text. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies 15(1): 129–173.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. New York & Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wong, Jock O. 2014. The Culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Bull, Peter & Maurice Waddle
2021. Speaker-audience intercommunication in political speeches: A contrast of cultures. Journal of Pragmatics 186 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Choi, Hyangmi & Peter Bull
2021. Speaker’s verbal behavior and collective audience responses in Korean political oratory. Language and Dialogue 11:2 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Choi, Hyangmi & Peter Bull
2023. Orators’ Nonverbal Behavior in Generating Audience Responses: Speaker-Audience Interaction in South Korean Political Speeches. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 47:3 ► pp. 403 ff. DOI logo
Bull, Peter
2020. Meeting the media as a political psychologist. History & Philosophy of Psychology 21:1 ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue