Page 120 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 120
What Do We Know about the World?
augural Address (In a Dark Valley: Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address),
where the U.S. President does not explain nor propose a new meaning,
but commits himself to a specific use of a crucial term2:
Definition as a commitment: “We-ness”
We – and in this presidency, when I use that word, I will mean you and me,
not the royal “we” to which American presidents have become far too at-
tached – we can, I think, hope to accomplish much, but only if we’re hon-
est with ourselves.
Obama uses the definition of the pronoun “we” to commit himself
to using it with a specific, strategic meaning. He distinguishes two uses,
corresponding to two classes of people: the pluralis maiestatis, used by
his predecessors, and the ordinary meaning, which he commits himself
to. The definition constitutes a promise of refusing the “royal we”, and
mirrors and shows a political attitude where the people become an ac-
tive part of the President’s decisions and choices. The definition becomes
a metaphor of his political behaviour, to which he commits. This act of
defining can be represented as follows.
Table 3: Defining for committing – Dialectical profile
The committing definition inserts the obligation to use a word with
a certain meaning into the speaker’s commitment store, not affecting the
interlocutor’s one. This type of definition is extremely strategic, as it im-
poses a language use commitment onto the speaker, but at the same time
binds the interlocutor to a specific interpretation of the word. Without
imposing the meaning of a term, the speaker imposes how it shall be in-
terpreted in his discourse.
2 Prelude to an Inaugural. (Retrieved from http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KA15Aa02.
html on 26 August 2012).
augural Address (In a Dark Valley: Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address),
where the U.S. President does not explain nor propose a new meaning,
but commits himself to a specific use of a crucial term2:
Definition as a commitment: “We-ness”
We – and in this presidency, when I use that word, I will mean you and me,
not the royal “we” to which American presidents have become far too at-
tached – we can, I think, hope to accomplish much, but only if we’re hon-
est with ourselves.
Obama uses the definition of the pronoun “we” to commit himself
to using it with a specific, strategic meaning. He distinguishes two uses,
corresponding to two classes of people: the pluralis maiestatis, used by
his predecessors, and the ordinary meaning, which he commits himself
to. The definition constitutes a promise of refusing the “royal we”, and
mirrors and shows a political attitude where the people become an ac-
tive part of the President’s decisions and choices. The definition becomes
a metaphor of his political behaviour, to which he commits. This act of
defining can be represented as follows.
Table 3: Defining for committing – Dialectical profile
The committing definition inserts the obligation to use a word with
a certain meaning into the speaker’s commitment store, not affecting the
interlocutor’s one. This type of definition is extremely strategic, as it im-
poses a language use commitment onto the speaker, but at the same time
binds the interlocutor to a specific interpretation of the word. Without
imposing the meaning of a term, the speaker imposes how it shall be in-
terpreted in his discourse.
2 Prelude to an Inaugural. (Retrieved from http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KA15Aa02.
html on 26 August 2012).
