Posted on 02/16/2008 6:37:19 AM PST by vietvet67
After studying the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, linguist Mark Liberman found that their speaking styles are “radically different.”
Then there’s Barack Obama.
His keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly earned him a reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s great contemporary orators. And that reputation has only been further hyped since the beginning of the presidential campaign, most recently because of the wildly popular music video, “Yes We Can,” which set to music Obama’s primary night speech in New Hampshire. The video, created by Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am, was released on Feb. 2 and has been viewed almost 10 million times on YouTube and yeswecansong.com.
Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks the most distinctive thing about Obama’s speeches isn’t the delivery, but the lyricism in the writing.
“You can take a short phrase like that, spoken any kind of way as long as it’s not dragged out, and sing over it,” he said. “There’s also a certain amount of repetition — the ‘Yes We Can’ theme — that allows this kind of weaving of vocal lines. But if that’s right, then what’s really musical about that speech was not so much its delivery, but its composition. It was written like a song, but not performed like a song.”
Linguist Geoff Nunberg, too, sees elements of Obama’s speeches that he says lend themselves to song.
“He does these parallel constructions,” said Nunberg, a researcher at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information. “For example, he says, ‘It’s not because of this, it’s not because of that.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
You nailed it!
Good answer. I think you got it.
The ability to read a teleprompter while saying nothing well.
Obama gives a good speech while saying absolutely nothing. The stupid sheople are falling for this charlatan
Maybe he plans on making himself the world leader. Just a thought.
Answer: just change the title a bit: "What Makes Obama a Feel Good Speaker?"
Cultists are susceptible to short snorts, constantly repeated.
I’d like to hear your Fisher Beer Speech, but only if you’ll close with the theme from “Summer Place.”
Nope. But it sets him up in an unassailable rhetorical position. Since he refuses to define anything, if you question him on anything you are defined yourself as being "Against Change". Wanting to NOT "Heal the nation". and "not" Repair this world. You want to continue "the divisiveness". and not "Bring America together".
His speech writers are some of the best demagogues around. McCain better hope he can get Obama out from behind his TelePrompter or he is going to have real trouble with this one.
Nope. But it sets him up in an unassailable rhetorical position. Since he refuses to define anything, if you question him on anything you are defined yourself as being "Against Change". Wanting to NOT "Heal the nation". and "not" Repair this world. You want to continue "the divisiveness". and not "Bring America together".
His speech writers are some of the best demagogues around. McCain better hope he can get Obama out from behind his TelePrompter or he is going to have real trouble with this one.
Not so much good, as powerful! He could whip a crowd into a frenzy.
Regards,
GtG
Two great articles about Obama’s speeches *UPDATED*
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2008/02/14/two-great-articles-about-obamas-speeches/
There was an editorial by Jay Ambrose the Orange County Register about this very topic.
It compares the Obama effect to that of orators like William Jennings Bryan, and ends with this:
“Will many give thought to the content of his speeches after the moment’s exhilaration has passed? Will they then ask themselves, as one prominent figure in Bryan’s time asked later of a Bryan speech that had initially electrified him, “What did he say, anyhow?”
Or might they do as the Republican Ira Smith did after being blown away by Bryan, namely sit down and dispassionately read the speech the next day? Smith, the Bryan biography reports, found he “disagreed with almost all of it.”
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/bryan-smith-speech-1980732-convention-kazin
Rampant idiocy in the audience?
I think BO stinks. He’s about as interesting as Al Gore.
It is an art. The basic sound has to be there, then the rhythm, and the rest can be grafted on. Got to have good sound first, just as in music.
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