Page 77 - 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. 77
he linguistic-discursive creation of the speaker’s ethos for the
sake of persuasion: a key aspect of rhetoric and argumentation 77
sult of linguistic-discursive construction and this is what we would like
to have a closer look at next on the basis of various speeches delivered by
Mussolini.
3. The Linguistic-Discursive Creation of the Speaker’s
Ethos
In the following section, which is the applied part of the study, we
will analyse six exemplary quotations from speeches given by Mussolini.
Each of them will first be discussed under the aspect of the morphosyn-
tactic criteria which in our opinion make for the construction of ethos.
After that we will think about how that particular linguistic structure
contributes to the improvement of ethos, provided ethos is understood
as the result of a linguistic-discursive construction, which is obviously
the case here.
In the first example we are shedding light on the function of mor-
phosyntactic zero-realizations of arguments. It says
(I) I popoli diventano grandi osando, rischiando, soffrendo, non mettendosi ai
margini della strada in una attesa parassitaria e vile. (Mussolini, 1941: 57)
Peoples become great through daring, risking, suffering, and not standing on
the roadside in parasitic and vile expectancy.
On the level of semantic valence it is obvious that the verbal func-
tors osare, rischiare, soffrire, i.e. dare, risk and suffer take more than one
argument as one always dares do something, risks something and suffers
something or from something. However, when used generically, the ma-
terially realized verbs osare, rischiare, soffrire do not necessarily require
another actant (Danler, 2007). This means that the speaker doesn’t have
to explicitly state what peoples have to dare, risk and suffer to become
great. If in that speech the speaker had explicitly said that he expected
his people to dare kill others, to risk their lives for him and his policy and
to suffer the deprivations of a war he himself was in favour of, he would
have explicitly created a different image or ethos of himself. If he had
done so, the speaker would probably have been reproached with selfish-
ness, ruthlessness and irresponsibility. For this reason it was wise of him
to use the verbs dare, risk and suffer generically without actantially spec-
ifying the second arguments.
In the second passage we see in a certain sense the opposite of the
first example. In this case an argument wouldn’t have to be morphosyn-
tactically realized to fulfill the criterion of the well-formedness of the
sentence and yet it is:
sake of persuasion: a key aspect of rhetoric and argumentation 77
sult of linguistic-discursive construction and this is what we would like
to have a closer look at next on the basis of various speeches delivered by
Mussolini.
3. The Linguistic-Discursive Creation of the Speaker’s
Ethos
In the following section, which is the applied part of the study, we
will analyse six exemplary quotations from speeches given by Mussolini.
Each of them will first be discussed under the aspect of the morphosyn-
tactic criteria which in our opinion make for the construction of ethos.
After that we will think about how that particular linguistic structure
contributes to the improvement of ethos, provided ethos is understood
as the result of a linguistic-discursive construction, which is obviously
the case here.
In the first example we are shedding light on the function of mor-
phosyntactic zero-realizations of arguments. It says
(I) I popoli diventano grandi osando, rischiando, soffrendo, non mettendosi ai
margini della strada in una attesa parassitaria e vile. (Mussolini, 1941: 57)
Peoples become great through daring, risking, suffering, and not standing on
the roadside in parasitic and vile expectancy.
On the level of semantic valence it is obvious that the verbal func-
tors osare, rischiare, soffrire, i.e. dare, risk and suffer take more than one
argument as one always dares do something, risks something and suffers
something or from something. However, when used generically, the ma-
terially realized verbs osare, rischiare, soffrire do not necessarily require
another actant (Danler, 2007). This means that the speaker doesn’t have
to explicitly state what peoples have to dare, risk and suffer to become
great. If in that speech the speaker had explicitly said that he expected
his people to dare kill others, to risk their lives for him and his policy and
to suffer the deprivations of a war he himself was in favour of, he would
have explicitly created a different image or ethos of himself. If he had
done so, the speaker would probably have been reproached with selfish-
ness, ruthlessness and irresponsibility. For this reason it was wise of him
to use the verbs dare, risk and suffer generically without actantially spec-
ifying the second arguments.
In the second passage we see in a certain sense the opposite of the
first example. In this case an argument wouldn’t have to be morphosyn-
tactically realized to fulfill the criterion of the well-formedness of the
sentence and yet it is:
