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January 20, 2005
Inaugural coverage...
I'll publish an analysis of the inaugural address tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to resist instant punditry. I plan to watch the event live. I'll then do a close reading of the text and run the text through Diction 5.0.
UPDATE (9:40 a.m.): Here's a preview from USA Today. I'm very interested in the context of this line: "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."
Bush begins with a passive construction, but uses subordination immediately to name the agent. This emphasizes the agent in a way that an active construction could not--by making the agent seem inevitable. This inevitability relies on the authoritative tone one may create with the passive voice. The clause following the colon completes the enthymeme. The syllogism that we might construct is tricky. Bush's stated conclusion appears to me to be the major premise. We'll have to wait for the full passage to complete it. But remember: the power of the enthymeme comes from leaving one or more elements out of the underlying syllogism, thus asking the auditor to complete it. (via Political Wire)
Posted by acline at January 20, 2005 8:40 AM | | Spotlight