![]() ![]() Using the technique that rhetoricians call anaphora, repeating a phrase at the opening of successive sentences, Obama and pitched to the news media a few days beforehand to ensure it would make the lead. A theme was tacked on as a kind of afterthought - “a new era of responsibility” How did he handle the fact that he is the first black president? Effectively, I thought, in its unobtrusiveness: “a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurantĬan now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”Ī good speech has to have a memorable theme, stated early and reprised at the end. Winter of our hardship” is a well-turned phrase about discontent, even if not as Shakespeare punned it, “made glorious summer by this sun of York.” Message to Muslim extremists concluded with “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist” that is quotable if it is original, but I think I’ve seen it before. Liked “the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve,” though it is not in the league with “the mystic chords of memory.” Obama’s “know that you are on the wrong side of history” “A nation cannot prosper when it favors only the prosperous” was a nice insertion with an eye toward Bartlett’s, and I To his oratorical credit, the president did not strain for quotable quotes. Word is “responsibly” - and “forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” which is a dovish way of saying he may have to risk the doves’ charge of “Obama’s war.”Ī soundbite that will echo is “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense” followed by a tough message to terrorists: “You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat He was not above using the old straw man “those-who” device, scorning “some who question the scale of our ambitions” and “what the cynics fail to understand.” He skirted theĬontroversy about harsh interrogations with a facile “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” - when there are times when that painful choiceĬannot be “rejected.” Obama followed that soon enough with a paragraph appealing to hardliners, promising to “responsibly leave Iraq to its people” - hawks can hope the operative “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” That worked. Once wrote a line for Nixon, “America cannot stand pat,” which got a glare from the First Lady - we never used that phrase again.) Obama topped that passage with a warmly familiar metaphor: He got into a good rhythm with a cheer-up paragraph, reminding us of America’s productive workers and inventive minds, our capacity undiminished, setting up his warning against “standing pat.” (I ![]() Get-this tone is better directed to the Russians. angrily had done instead, he called it a “consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collectiveįailure to make hard choices.” That was an unexpectedly tolerant note, but which he stepped on with an imperious, lecturing pointer phrase about meeting challenges: “Know this, America.” That Obama was wise not to blame only the capitalists for the sinking economy, as F.D.R. Was “a moment that will define a generation,” but the two thoughts were unconnected. Late in the speech, he said that “the spirit of service” ![]() Line or Roosevelt’s following phrase “has a rendezvous with destiny,” but today’s speaker showed no sign of its resonance. He used the phrase “this generation of Americans,” reminding some of J.F.K.’s “torch has been passed” Properly reminded us at the start that he was taking office in the midst of a crisis. ![]() It also discusses speech perception from the communication point of view.“Maybe he considered ‘the better angels of our nature’ too cornball.”Īfter the first stumbling presidential oath-taking I can recall - as much the fault of the Chief Justice as the incoming president, but it’s not something they can rehearse - President Barack Obama Thus this paper comments on the weight of Ohala’s arguments and notes whether any theory of the fundamental basis of speech perception can actually be proven or disproven. When dealing with plausibility arguments, one must be careful to ponder the evidence for different positions. The arguments Ohala uses to attack the articulatory theories of speech perception do not really disprove them instead, they simply argue that an acoustically based theory is more plausible. However, like many human perception theories, it is difficult (if not impossible) to verify experimentally. It is very reasonable that listeners need not refer to articulation during speech perception. In this review of John Ohala’s paper (‘‘Speech perception is hearing sounds, not tongues’’), we are sympathetic to his position that acoustic properties have largely driven the selection of sounds found in speech production. ![]()
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