Analysing the language of politics was surely a demanding but at the same time a very appealing task. As the elections are getting closer and closer, politicians, both in the United States and in Italy, are intensifying their electoral campaigns and increasing the numbers of public speeches, interviews and appearances on television: as a consequence the quantity of materials to evaluate and explore seemed be quite endless. When I started to look for videos as well as articles about the two Democratic candidates and the leader of the Italian Democratic Party I felt pretty overwhelmed and honestly I didn’t know where to start. Anyway I decided to focus on the videos I found on The New York Times Website and on Youtube and I also had a quick look to the official Website of the single candidates.
Before examining in details the language used by Obama, Clinton and Veltroni, I would like to point out two observations. First of all there are meaningful differences between the way American and Italian candidates organize their campaigns: it seems that in the US there is a tendency to turn politic into a big show: Hillary and Obama always talk to oceanic crowds from big stages with the audience screaming and shouting: they look more like rock stars that politicians. On the contrary in Italy, as far as left wing candidates are concerned, electoral campaigns tend to have a more “intimate dimension” or at least they are not as spectacular as in the US. Then in examining each candidate it is important to take into consideration not only the verbal language, but also their body language, their attitude and the way they relate to the audience, their slogans and hymns: in other words, it is fundamental to study these politicians from different points of view and consider different but equally meaningful elements.
I would like to start my analysis investigating the two protagonist of the “Democratic presidential pack”: Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. After having watched four videos for each candidate I realized that the two Democrats do have something in common: for instance they wave their arms and hands, they are willing to interact with their audiences (which seem to be extremely involved in the political debate) and both focus on helping unprivileged people and choose negotiation and mediation over conflict. Anyway Hillary seems to have a more authoritative attitude and in her speeches she never forgets to point out that she is the “best qualified and experienced person” to run for the office of President; I also noticed that she often mentions the words “economy”, “ Us leadership”, “education” and “children”. She always affords important issues such as the war in Iraq and the need to take into consideration Cuba and the European situation: in other words she explores a variety of topics and she tries to give concrete solutions to the problems of the nation. Barack Obama instead uses different strategies and he seems to prefer a more abstract series of key expressions: he often indicates the need of “discover the better part of ourselves as a nation” and phrases such as “our time has come”, “ we can turn the page of politics”, “we can stand up” and “we can dream big dreams” occur constantly in his public speeches. The keywords he uses are “dreams”, “change” but also “young people”, “families” and “workers” and his slogan “yes we can”, which he often translates into Spanish –“sì, se puede!” – when he is talking to a huge number of people, is nowadays internationally recognized as the brand of his campaign and it seems to be so powerful that it has been adopted also abroad, for instance by the Italian politician Veltroni. Undoubtedly Obama is a great communicator: he tries to put people at ease, he has great smiles and a great warmth: it is definitely not a surprise that people, especially women, find him very charming. Journalists in fact argue that the two Democrats are now fighting to get the vote of those undecided female voters who are attracted by Obama’s appeal abut at the same time fascinated by the strength of Hillary, the only woman to ever have a real opportunity of become President of the United States.
Surprisingly it was easier to analyse Barack’s and Hillary’s speeches than trying to listen to a whole speech of Veltroni. I watched carefully more or less three videos I found in Youtube but I must confess that at the fourth video I was definitely falling asleep. Fortunately I came across a video of the humorist Crozza making an amazing parody of Veltroni and that was really helpful as far as my analysis is concerned. He really succeeded in representing the characteristics of Veltroni’s use of language and his attitude when talking to an audience. The Leader of the Italian Democratic Party is in fact static – if compared to the dynamism of Obama or Hillary on stage – and when talking he uses a lot of adverbs and his speeches are full of repetitions, as well as series of ambiguities: in other words he wants to make people aware that often Veltroni is not very clear about his purposes, or at least that he is not able to express them in an effective way. This is partly true: I think that, although he tries to be as direct as possible, for the leader of the PD it is sometimes difficult to “get to the point” and that he wastes time in useless observation about Italy. Anyway his keywords and key expressions are very similar to those used by Barack Obama: listening to Veltroni we can easily find a wide range of words belonging to the semantic field of “change”, “hope”, “innovation”, “unity”, “young people” and “women”( that is to say in Italian: “tempo nuovo”, “rinnovamento”, “Italia unita”, “giovani precari”, “pari opportunità” etc..). Veltroni insists on the need of giving Italy both economic and social stability and focuses on the problem of young people applying for a secure job and on the problem of giving women the real opportunity to emerge at all levels.
I just finished to read the article that the Financial Times dedicated to leader of the PD and I must admit that Guy Dinmore’s observations are very interesting. It is quite obvious that Veltroni has taken Obama as a model and that he tries to identify with him but in my opinion there are still a lot of differences. Veltroni, as I previously said, is a little bit static and does not interact with the audience as Obama. However, the leader of the Democratic Party only occasionally pronounces the name of his main antagonist, that is Silvio Berlusconi, whereas both Obama and Hillay often point out the weak points of McCain policy.
I would like to start my analysis investigating the two protagonist of the “Democratic presidential pack”: Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. After having watched four videos for each candidate I realized that the two Democrats do have something in common: for instance they wave their arms and hands, they are willing to interact with their audiences (which seem to be extremely involved in the political debate) and both focus on helping unprivileged people and choose negotiation and mediation over conflict. Anyway Hillary seems to have a more authoritative attitude and in her speeches she never forgets to point out that she is the “best qualified and experienced person” to run for the office of President; I also noticed that she often mentions the words “economy”, “ Us leadership”, “education” and “children”. She always affords important issues such as the war in Iraq and the need to take into consideration Cuba and the European situation: in other words she explores a variety of topics and she tries to give concrete solutions to the problems of the nation. Barack Obama instead uses different strategies and he seems to prefer a more abstract series of key expressions: he often indicates the need of “discover the better part of ourselves as a nation” and phrases such as “our time has come”, “ we can turn the page of politics”, “we can stand up” and “we can dream big dreams” occur constantly in his public speeches. The keywords he uses are “dreams”, “change” but also “young people”, “families” and “workers” and his slogan “yes we can”, which he often translates into Spanish –“sì, se puede!” – when he is talking to a huge number of people, is nowadays internationally recognized as the brand of his campaign and it seems to be so powerful that it has been adopted also abroad, for instance by the Italian politician Veltroni. Undoubtedly Obama is a great communicator: he tries to put people at ease, he has great smiles and a great warmth: it is definitely not a surprise that people, especially women, find him very charming. Journalists in fact argue that the two Democrats are now fighting to get the vote of those undecided female voters who are attracted by Obama’s appeal abut at the same time fascinated by the strength of Hillary, the only woman to ever have a real opportunity of become President of the United States.
Surprisingly it was easier to analyse Barack’s and Hillary’s speeches than trying to listen to a whole speech of Veltroni. I watched carefully more or less three videos I found in Youtube but I must confess that at the fourth video I was definitely falling asleep. Fortunately I came across a video of the humorist Crozza making an amazing parody of Veltroni and that was really helpful as far as my analysis is concerned. He really succeeded in representing the characteristics of Veltroni’s use of language and his attitude when talking to an audience. The Leader of the Italian Democratic Party is in fact static – if compared to the dynamism of Obama or Hillary on stage – and when talking he uses a lot of adverbs and his speeches are full of repetitions, as well as series of ambiguities: in other words he wants to make people aware that often Veltroni is not very clear about his purposes, or at least that he is not able to express them in an effective way. This is partly true: I think that, although he tries to be as direct as possible, for the leader of the PD it is sometimes difficult to “get to the point” and that he wastes time in useless observation about Italy. Anyway his keywords and key expressions are very similar to those used by Barack Obama: listening to Veltroni we can easily find a wide range of words belonging to the semantic field of “change”, “hope”, “innovation”, “unity”, “young people” and “women”( that is to say in Italian: “tempo nuovo”, “rinnovamento”, “Italia unita”, “giovani precari”, “pari opportunità” etc..). Veltroni insists on the need of giving Italy both economic and social stability and focuses on the problem of young people applying for a secure job and on the problem of giving women the real opportunity to emerge at all levels.
I just finished to read the article that the Financial Times dedicated to leader of the PD and I must admit that Guy Dinmore’s observations are very interesting. It is quite obvious that Veltroni has taken Obama as a model and that he tries to identify with him but in my opinion there are still a lot of differences. Veltroni, as I previously said, is a little bit static and does not interact with the audience as Obama. However, the leader of the Democratic Party only occasionally pronounces the name of his main antagonist, that is Silvio Berlusconi, whereas both Obama and Hillay often point out the weak points of McCain policy.
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