Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T20:02:40.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Ethnic style in political rhetoric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2009

John J. Gumperz
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access

Summary

Events of the last decade have served to accentuate the importance of verbal communication in modern urban society. The way we talk, along with what we say, determine how effective we are in dealing with the public agencies, the judiciary and other bodies that increasingly affect the quality of our daily lives. A glance at recent history will show that in public situations, it is easier to get things done when everyone concerned has the same background than when backgrounds differ. This creates a serious dilemma for speakers of minority dialects who rely on their in-group strategy to enlist cooperation and mobilize support, but who find that the largely automatic persuasive strategies that they rely on at home and in their own neighborhoods, may cause serious miscommunication in public settings.

This chapter illustrates this dilemma through in depth analysis of two speech events: a black protestant religious sermon and a speech made during a public rally by a black political leader. The sermon was recorded from a radio broadcast of a service held in a San Francisco Bay Area church and is typical of a type of sermon that can be heard on public radio stations on Sundays. The main speaker is the assistant pastor of the church, and the congregation whose responses are also recorded is black. The political address was made during the late 1960s at a San Francisco public meeting, called to protest against United States policies during the Vietnam war. The speaker was a well-known, but highly controversial black community leader.

Type
Chapter
Information
Discourse Strategies , pp. 187 - 203
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×