The Future of Education

Lim (2008) linguistically examined the rhetorical presidency of the United States of America through such aspects as readability, content analysis, and the viewpoints of speechwriters. Arguing that while presidents talk a lot, they contribute very little to constructive public deliberation, Lim (2008) identifies an increasing tendency toward language simplification (e.g., shorter sentences, easier words) and the resulting substantive impoverishment. He calls the tendency “anti-intellectualism” in political language. This same line of analysis is expressed by Ott and Dickinson (2019) concerning President Trump’s speech style and is characterized in what they call “white rage” and the extensive use of twitter. In the proposed project, I will study how Japanese political leaders such as the new Environmental Minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, have addressed parliament and the public. Will we find the same qualitative decline and debasement of political discourse and quality of rhetoric as Lim (2008) observed? Looking at one noteworthy example that addresses this question, please observe the following statements from the February 4, 2019 Japanese parliamentary session. Attending, among others, were five political leaders, who, on such date, held the following titles:  Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe; the Secretary of Health, Takumi Nemoto; the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Taro Kono; the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga; and Senator, Shinjiro Koizumi. Upon examining the speech patterns of these five political leaders, we noticed the frequent use of the verb omou (to feel, to sense) as compared with the use of the verb kangaeru (to ponder, to consider). An interesting discovery is that Senator Koizumi frequently used the verb omou, more than any other political leader in the group. Using it a total of 55 times clearly suggests, as compared to the less frequent use by others, that Senator Koizumi expresses himself in a more personal way, and is not afraid to share his individual feelings and emotions with his audience. This result may provide evidence that this Japanese politician is adopting a more personal and expressive style, using an overt and more emotional technique. It might also indicate a new political style in Japan of “rapport talk,” which focuses more on the emotional aspect, as opposed to the typical “report talk,” which focuses more on the logical and fact-centered aspect.  

Keywords: political style, rapport talk.

Reference:
[1] Lim, Elvin. 2008. The anti-intellectual presidency. New York: Oxford University Press.
[2] Ott Brian and Greg Dickinson. 2019. The twitter presidency. New York: Routledge.