Listening to Obama

I’ve said before that I’m looking for something to do on Tuesday — some way to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama. But after reading this piece in the Washington Post, I might just stay home and listen carefully to his speech.

Obama is an orator, a rare thing in a time when educated people, a lot of them Obama supporters, have been taught to distrust old-fashioned eloquence. They want text they can deconstruct, the verbal equivalent of spreadsheets; they say they want candidates who talk about “the issues.”

But talk about deconstruction! Anyone remember their rhetoric classes? What, you didn’t take rhetoric? Wasn’t it right after Latin?

Anyway, writer Henry Allen obviously took his, and he deconstructs Obama’s speeches by pointing to the techniques first described by the ancient Greeks: the rhythm of speech, the gestures, the methods good speakers use to convince us of what they’re saying. Allen also points to some legendary speeches from the past:

Winston Churchill rocked it in a chant of anapests (da-da-DA): “We shall FIGHT on the BEACHes . . . we shall FIGHT in the FIELDS . . . we shall FIGHT in the HILLS . . . we shall NEVer surRENDer.”

He knew about the ancient Greeks controlling and defending against the power of oratory by codifying it with labels you heard once in college and forgot: asyndeton, litotes, epistrophe. For instance, here Churchill is using the technique of anaphora, repeating phrases at the beginning of clauses. Note, too, that in defense of England he uses nothing but Old English words except for “surrender,” which comes from the French.

The whole three-page article (registration may be required, unfortunately) is essential reading, I think. You may still get swept up in the elegance of his speech, but at least you’ll know what’s happening to you — and why.