2.3 The Nature of Discourse and Political Speeches

In previous chapters, the attention was devoted just to the explanation of some theoretical principles which are a part of general discourse analysis. It must be stressed here that the explanations are not exhaustive and discourse analysis is a more complex process with more disciplines and sub-analyses to be done in order to fully understand the particular discourse. The information presented in previous chapters is just the chosen elements of such process because the thorough description of the pragmatic disciplines and all methods of discourse analysis may not be listed in this thesis. Instead, in the following chapters and sub-chapters, the focus will be shifted to the definition and description of the political discourse or speech. And it is evident that the necessary features of political speeches which would be needed to know during the practical analysis of political discourse will be presented and explained as well.

2.3.1 Politics and its Theoretical Bases

There are several definitions of the word politics. Above all, it represents any kind of human management of public affairs; beside this, the word politics also encompass constant debates about these affairs or, probably even more often, various disputes about the meaning of political expressions. Such disputes about the meaning of words like democracy, liberation, socialism, communism, nationalization, terrorism etc. may be attributed the status of familiar and constant aspect of politics (Fairclough 24). And even though according to Halliday and Hasan for whom the language exemplifies the whole story in the majority of formal and informal discussions on various abstract themes, e.g. politics, business and intellectual life, it is not useful to put too much emphasis just on the language while back grounding other factors; surely, Halliday and Hassan are right when they suggest that the language plays a key role in these discussions, however, it may be doubted whether the language is furthermore self-sufficient and all relevant situational factors are recognizable just from the language (Ch. 1.3.3). The term political demonstration is sometimes interpreted as riots while denoting the same event; the only difference is just in the speaker's view of interpretation and in his opinion on the matter. Thorough discourse analysis can be undertaken to decode the message with respect to the wider context of challenge of authority and power. Furthermore, it enables us to understand better various political actions (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 4: 8).

2.3.2 Features of Political Participation

Political participation may be defined not only as the activity of politicians on one side and mere voting of citizens on the other, but also as the effort to persuade someone how to vote, attend a protest for a political candidate or particular cause and also to write an apologetic or protesting letter to the newspapers. Action like these may be perceived as social because unlike the act of voting which is usually in developed democracies a secret act the public participation consists of some exchange between the person who want to say or change something by particular activity and the audience to which this activity is primarily devoted to. In other words, these actions are forms of public opinion expression (Hayes, Scheufele and Huge 263).

To become a skillful political speaker means to manage all aspect of intelligence: analytical, creative and, especially, practical. The last of them may be considered the most important one because, above all, practical intelligence helps to manage the so-called political skill. And this political skill which may be learnt only to some degree is presumably dependent on the so-called tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge may be defined as social skill gained through various experiences during a particular time. Tacit knowledge may be, furthermore, compared to intuition, common sense, good feeling or a snack. Politicians who have acquired a management of tacit knowledge and consequently also the political skills have a higher probability of success in their communication because they can appropriately "read the situation" and, for instance, know when to use humor to reduce the tension (Perrewé et al. 117).