Conductor of public feelings

An affective-emotional rhetorical analysis of Obama’s national eulogy in Tucson

Bibliographic Data

ID9237297
AuthorsJamie Landau (Keene State College, corresponding author), Bethany Keeley-Jonker (Trinity Christian College)
Year2018
Volume104
Issue2
Pages166-188
Publication date2018-04-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueQuarterly Journal of Speech (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-5630 • E-ISSN: 1479-5779
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00335630.2018.1447138
OpenAlexW2793815434
LanguageEN
Citations received9

We argue that one important role of the contemporary president is to be a conductor of public feelings. To demonstrate, we analyze U.S. President Barack Obama’s national eulogy speech delivered on January 12, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona. We show how Obama acts as a musical or energy conductor, redirecting a soundscape of boisterous enthusiasm to be in concert with discordant feelings of national pain and anger and moving them toward social love that is non-partisan and at times civic-centered. This essay has implications for public policy, racial registers of feeling, and writing the bodies of rhetorical scholars into criticism

Aesthetics · Anger · Art · Closeness · Criticism · Enthusiasm · Eulogy · Feeling · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Public opinion · Public speaking · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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