2.3.3 The Features of Spoken Political Speeches and their Gradual Changes

The feature that prevails in spoken political discourse - especially with regards to the fact that it is otherwise used in the written one - is relatively high degree of formality. It is then just logical that formality is usually accompanied with more polite forms and higher degree of impersonality; such discourse is characterized with the choice of specific vocabulary and syntactic structures as well (Dontcheva-Navrátilová; Ch. 7). Examples of such speech are shown in the Practical part of this thesis; nevertheless, as it is explained later, there are some tendencies to bring political speech nearer to the everyday discourse and that is why political speeches have been becoming more informal and personal.

2.3.3.1 Changes of the Features of Political Speeches through the Time

So far just a general concept of extra linguistic reality has been stressed out. Due to the fact that it has not been described more thoroughly it might seem that this reality is dependent just on the place where the political event is held and on the public whom the political speech is dedicated to; nevertheless, within the analysis of the particular political event and in setting it into particular extra linguistic environment it should be born in, the mind furthermore, the time when it has taken place. The terms like "negroes" are generally felt as inappropriate in recent days and not only the politician, but he foremost, has to be very sensitive during his preparation of the speech. It is just not surprising that even the political environment in 1960s differs significantly from the contemporary one. Thanks to the further steps in movements like feminism or racial equality it would be felt as politically inappropriate to ascribe the role of women only as secretaries making coffees to her male bosses or to show black waiters serving coffee to white men in a fancy hotel dining room (Hirschman, Scott and Wells 43). Expressions like these are a matter of political and moral evaluation. Among the characteristics of popular features in political speeches is often an effort to empower the powerless, give the voice the voiceless, expose power and abuse and mobilize people to remedy social wrongs (Blommaert and Bulcaen 450).

2.3.3.2 The Influence of Media on Changes in Political Speeches

Though political speeches are a type of discourse with its typical features, it is indispensable that they have to more and more conform to the new media which occupy a significant space in everyday lives of people and, viewed from the perspective of politicians, the potential future voters. Undoubtedly, it must be taken into consideration that media have played gradually a more significant role because they more or less determine which interests control the government. For easier and clearer comparison, it could be expressed also in the amount of money which have been spent on political campaigns in media which constitute a considerable portion of it: while in 1952 all candidates for The House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency spent together 140 million dollars, in 2000 this number reached 5 billion (bagdigian in Stoll 256). In order to reduce the connection between money and paid political speeches, political campaigns in the United States are being financed by direct and non-direct federal and state funding systems. For instance, during the presidential election in 1988 it was expected that 170 million dollars would be raised from the candidate’s voluntary election fund box which was sponsored by tax payers who had checked off that they are willing to contribute from their personal tax income forms. Thirty per cent of American tax payers did it. Consequently, primary candidates for the presidency would receive up to 11 million dollars, each of them in federal matching funds. Moreover, general election candidates who had won their battles in primary election received another 40 million dollars from public funds (Caywood and Preston (208). This sum of money is used to a great extent to media campaigns. A mutual dependence of politics and media and vice versa is therefore increasingly evident.

By using the term media we must recently understand not only the so-called traditional media like newspaper, radio or television but, even with the increasing tendency the Internet as well. Since there is still not extensive research on this matter, it would be interesting to investigate the impact of online or offline political mobilization efforts. It is possible just to guess that still many political mobilization efforts conducted by face-to-face communication do not directly encourage online participation while mobilization conducted online stimulates some kind of activity and in this sense some kind of political participation (Best and Krueger 188).

Although that with the emergence of the Internet and the most recently new social networks such as Facebook or Twitter it is the users of this networks who decide what they would be reading, listening or watching, or even what they would be writing in various forms of their Internet blogs, the prevailing influence on what would be presented and discussed lays in the so-called traditional or old media, such as newspapers, radios and televisions and their editors and reporters. The politicians are thus confronted not only with their potential voters but also with these media workers because politicians must catch foremost them in order to persuade them to report the politician’s ideas. Thus, the political programs and speeches sometimes try to mimic the common language of television’s programs and to echo humorous sketches or publicity announcements. The critics sometimes doubt that traditional political discourse degrades and subordinates to the norms of commercial media too much; nevertheless, it should be stressed out that by using some humorous forms of communications, such as parody or television jargon, the political speeches reach the interest of more people while they simultaneously do not become less critical or les lucid than in case of the use of traditional rhetorical tools (Miguel and Resende 127). And therefore, it is not rare to find many examples of casual manners, colloquial expressions, reciprocal addresses or repetitions in contemporary political interviews (Blommaert and Bulcaen 454).

On the contrary, with the knowledge that media may even feasibly influence who would win the election, a particular moral obligation of media, and therefore what is presented here, should not be marginalized and a partial self-control and control of those who want to say something there should be realized. It is also crucial to remember that media enable to create a world of cultural meanings and provide the arena in which most political debates must occur. This results in determining the types of images and styles of argumentation that will influence various aspects of life such as our subconscious desires (Stoll 256).