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Article Summary
In this article, Finlayson (2014) focused on depicting how political speeches are an integral outcome of societal constructs associated with the aesthetic, institutional, and technological organization and arrangement of communication. The purpose of the article was to provide justifications for the significance and value of political rhetoric in political speeches, particularly in the British context. Finlayson attained this purpose by taking an analytical approach that focused on the areas of political speeches in the past and present, the communicative regime, the virtues of political rhetoric, and the contemporary British rhetoric.
Finlayson (2014) presented several main points the first of which was that rhetoric as an art is essentially concerned with making political arguments and discourses persuasive amidst political contestation by connecting the audiences’ common sense. Here, the author believed that in political communication, rhetoric constitutes both a distinctive theory and practice of communicating persuasively while recognizing that noble and successful arguments in public life integrate and make sense of the propositions derived from the common sense of the people in one’s audience.
The second main point is that political speech in the past is not the same as in the present because public speaking in politics has evolved into a new political system in which the art of rhetoric is no longer appreciated as one of the most indispensable political arts. According to Finlayson (2014), public speaking is a fundamental aspect of politics, and so, preparing and delivering political speeches must reflect appropriate levels of rhetoric to ensure they are persuasive enough to the audiences. Arguing from the perceptive of speeches by Balfour and Cameron, the author held that using rhetoric in political speeches should stimulate audiences to be in immediate agreement or disdain with the speaker.
As regards the communicative regime, Finlayson (2014) argued that technology is at the core of the organization of political communication today. The author held that technology has significantly driven the means by which political communication is amplified, recorded, and disseminated to audiences. Besides this, technology has transformed the scale and cultural distance of political communication, together with its accessibility to audiences and creators and its durability.
On the virtues of political rhetoric, Finlayson (2014) argued that a rhetorical form of political communication must reflect three key features that include proving, pleasing, and persuading. The attainment of these characteristics requires the speaker to demonstrate prudence, wisdom, great judgment, and aptitude to deliver political speeches in a manner that befits the specific context. This makes the audience perceive such communication as truthful, meticulous, and necessarily attractive.
Finally, regarding the concept of rhetoric in Britain today, the author’s main point was a reiteration of the role of technology in political communication. Here, Finlayson (2014) sustained that technology has led to the creation of a new public communication regime characterized by noteworthy redundancy of classical rhetorical skills. For this reason, the author concludes by affirming that the contemporary British political rhetoric is not very good at attaining the three features of an effective rhetorical form of political communication, namely, proving, persuading, and pleasing.
References
Finlayson, A. (2014). Proving, pleasing and persuading? Rhetoric in contemporary British politics. The Political Quarterly, 85(4), 428-436.
