Rhetoric of Two Inaugural Speeches : An Analysis of Rhetoric Types and Features in American Inaugural Speeches

This paper will study the use of rhetoric types and features in two inaugural speeches, the possibility if categorizing each speech as one rhetoric type, which speech uses Aristotle’s three means of persuasion better and the methods applicability in categorizing the speeches under the “plebiscitary period’s” four qualities. The two speeches that were used are Donald J. Trump’s inaugural speech and George W. Bush’s first inaugural speech. Previous research conducted by Elvin T. Lim stood for the basis and connections of the five rhetoric types and 27 rhetoric features. Aristotle’s first book on rhetoric described the three means of persuasion and the definition of rhetoric. The theory of the “plebiscitary period” and its four qualities were theorised by Michael J. Korzi. The two speeches were collected from the Small Corpus of Political Speeches. Two wordlists were gathered from the two speeches by using Antconc. The wordlists were then crosschecked with the Harvard IV-4 psychosociological and the Lasswell value dictionaries for the rhetoric features. The data displayed that both speeches favoured the assertive and democratic rhetoric type. The speeches could not be categorized as one speech, instead they were categorized as assertive and democratic rhetoric type speeches. The data could not be used to tell if one speech used Aristotle’s three means persuasion better. The method used was able to find three qualities of the “plebiscitary period” in three rhetoric features. Thus, making it able to place the speeches as a part of the “plebiscitary period”.