Teten, Ryan Lee. “‘We the People’: The ‘Modern’ Rhetorical Popular Address of the Presidents during the Founding Period.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, Dec. 2007, pp. 669-682. Ebscohost, doi: 10.1177/1065912907304495. Accessed 27 Oct. 2016.

Teten, a rhetorical scholar of political communication, uses rhetorical analysis to do historical inquiry within the field of political science to look at “the ‘traditional/modern’” paradigm as it relates to the speech category of the State of the Union address. For the scope of this research, he defines rhetorical leadership “as the process of discovering, articulating, and sharing the available means of influence in order to motivate human agents in a particular situation…it is leadership exerted through talk or persuasion” (Dorsey as qtd. on 670). His method is a “line-by-line content analysis through all of the State of the Union Addresses from George Washington to George W. Bush to count elements such as word length, specific word usage, and context” (671). These categories are designed to highlight both audience in address to congress vs. the people and speaker in identification, authority, and directive rhetoric. Teten concludes “that presidential rhetoric may not be easily categorized as simply ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’” (670, 671).

A closer look at each of the above listed categories reveals claims through each set of graphed data. For example, “contemporary presidents use identification rhetoric [we, us, our] in amounts never before seen in the State of the Union Address” (675). Authority rhetoric (I, me, my) is slightly more prevalent on the modern side of the paradigm, but there are traces of it more consistently throughout presidential history. Directive rhetoric (you, your, yours) is prevalent in our founding fathers’ speeches: “the initial presidents spoke with high levels of directive rhetoric to the people and the Congress…[which] mirrors the directive rhetoric of late-twentieth-century State of the Union Addresses” (678, 679).

Because of the method that Teten use, his study holds value in that each of his data sets holds a plethora of questions for further study. His multidisciplinary methodological approach allows for shared data and terms that can bring much to conversations in both Political Science and English Studies. Teten reiterates communication scholar David Zarefsky’s conclusion that “‘it is worth re-examining earlier presidencies–not only to appreciate them more and see from whence we came–but to realize striking similarities and recurrent patterns of rhetorical innovation’” (qtd. on 680). The methodology of historical inquiry allows rhetorical analysis to highlight both the importance of the language used as well as the historical figures and to integrate multiple disciplines successfully. In light of our current political season, this analysis was interesting. I wonder what an analysis of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s stump speeches and debates would reveal in using Teten’s same lens of identification, authority, and directive rhetoric. Would they align with our founding fathers in any ways or further the traditional/modern divide?

I had a hard time finding articles for this week’s topic of methods and methodologies. Rhetoric is a discipline that permeates so many others and its methodologies are fairly vast, at least in their application. I was able to find a small passage in one of our course textbooks that listed out historical inquiry, theory building, empirical research, discourse analysis, and postmodern investigation as a starting point for identifying and categorizing the array of research that rhetoricians do and rhetorical methods employed by other disciplines (Lauer 132). Ultimately, I had to use a couple articles that would highlight a methodology indirectly and connect to identification is some way.

Works Cited

Lauer, Janice M. “Rhetoric and Composition.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s), edited by Bruce McComiskey, National Council for Teachers of English,  2006, 106-152.