Epidectic or Ceremonial Address / Reagan's Speech

Key issue

honor (what do we as a culture define as honorable)

Time

present (sacred present)

Style

high (honor requires beauty)

Key strategy

amplification or copia (enlarge object of honor)

Key form of evidence

example

Key theme

heroism

Key appeals

values

Key sources of inention

memoria or public memory

Key grounds for judgement

aesthetic

Cultural history: 1984 election

Reagan vs Mondale

Cultural history: new patriotism

-1970’s vietnam, watergate, and iran led to serious doubts about US

-Reagan promised to restore nation’s values

-40th anniversary of WWII ideal set of opportunities

-visual symbols

What were the key issues of the 1984 election?

-economy

-foreign policy

-Reagan’s age

Cost: Arms Control

-1963-80: bipartisan commitment to nuclear arms control

-lead to series of treaties and agreements: Strategic arms limitation treaty I and II, Test ban treaty

-by limiting growth in number of nuclear weapons, sought to create a stable world order

-neither side could confidently attack the other: deterrence

Cost: Reagan claimed we’d been out-negotiated

-now at a disadvantage

-increased number of nuclear weapons while seeking a treaty that would cut them

-soviet leaders kept dying on him

-risked war

Credibility

-1911 to 2004

-Born in Illinois, attended Eureka College

-began as a sportscaster, became an actor, then a show anchor

-gave speeches around country on free enterprise and conservative principles

-governor of cali 1966-74

-ran briefly for president in 1968

-challened incumbent president ford in republican primaries in 1976

-strong conservative (portrayed as radical)

-for this speech, he was of an age to have served but didn’t

Strategies: narrative

-myth

-ancedote

-brief summary of war

-opening story of the rangers

Myth

-an accepted story that explains key events or communal character

-not false, a different sort of true

Ancedote

a specific example, case, or instance used to illustrate or fill out larger societal myths

In epideictic, myths and anecdotes display deeds speakers hope will ____ the community

inspire

Opening story of the Rangers

-prologue of WWII

-story of the rangers

broadens out to others

Strategies: Phantasia

-phantasia

-opening ranger story

-metaphor of “bear arms”

-lord lovat

-poles and others

Phantasia

identifies the strategy when speakers use words to paint pictures, makes the scene come alive for the audience

Strategies: opening ranger story

-5 senses

-narrative action in detail

-heroic characters

Strategies: amplification

-“Before me are the men, These were the boys, the men who took the cliff, the champions, the heroes-at each stage, they get bigger”

-values are amplified (faith, beliefs, loyalty, love, what is right, deeply honorable form of govt, models of action, rebuilt with these same values)

Amplification

power of language to make something bigger, louder, broader

-part of the prescence family

-in epideictic, you must make visible and big what it is you seek to honor

Strategies

-direct address

-dissociation

-values appeals

-allusion

-analogy

-lessons/principles