Les discours d’investiture ou les paradoxes de l’éloge

This paper examines the inaugural ceremony in order to understand presidential inaugural addresses. Epideictic rhetoric is paradoxical. It invents its original kairos out of banal topoi. Fostering deliberative action through epideictic contemplation, the inaugural address as a genre is an extension of the ceremony but can also become autonomous and create its own tradition. By using the antitheses of jeremiadic logic, the presidents fetch continuity out of change, chosenness out of adversity and consensus out of discrimination.Benoit à La Guillaume Luc. Les discours d’investiture ou les paradoxes de l’éloge. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°83, janvier 2000. Civilisation américaine : problématiques et questionnaires. pp. 100-112