engleski

Analysis of Nobel Prize Acceptance Speeches Delivered by Laureates in Literature

Oratory has traditionally been divided into political (or deliberative), legal (or forensic), and epideictic (or ceremonial). For the last one, according to Aristotle (1898), its characteristic is to praise or to blaim, and its ultimate goal is honor or disgrace. Moreover, for epideictic oratory, unlike political and legal, artistic effort and pathos are more important (Chase, 1961). Contemporary handbooks of oratory describe ceremonial speeches as those that hold people together in a community by celebrating and reinforcing mutual goals, beliefs and wishes. There are two main techniques by which this is achieved: identification and magnification (Osborn and al., 2008). Identification is the creation of close feelings among the members of the audience and the audience and the speaker, while magnification is created in a speech by celebrating achievements, talents and unselfish acts. There are many different types of ceremonial speeches (the speeches of tribute, the speeches of inspiration, etc.), one of them are the acceptance speeches, which are delivered while receiving an award or honor. Every year during the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony Laureates deliver acceptance speeches. For this paper acceptance speeches of eight Nobel Laureates in Literature (NF=2, NM=6) were slected, that were held from 2003 untill 2015. The duration of the collected speeches varied from three to five minutes. The corpus for analysis included only the speeches that were held by Nobel prize winners in person (and not by someone else on their behalf). The first goal was to examine if there are two main techniques of ceremonial speaking (identification and magnification) in the speeches of the Nobel Laureates in Literature, and if there are, how they are realized (with the use of narrative, anecdote, emphasizing the heroes, overcoming obstacles, etc.). The second goal was to examine the use of rhetorical figures and to determine which figures dominated the speeches. Since acceptance speeches are speeches of high style, it is expected that they are abundant with rhetorical figures (Škarić, 2003). The results show that seven out of eight speakers have used magnification in their acceptance speeches, and that technique of ceremonial speaking was also the most common in the analyzed corpus. Technique of identification was less frequent than magnification, but more common in the speeches with a political message. Figures of thought (rhetorical modesty, rherorical question, proverbs, anegdotes), tropes (metaphor, metonymy, personification) and figures of words (leitmotiv, repetition) were the most frequent rhetorical figures. Altogether, it can be concluded that five speeches had solemn tone and ceremonial content, while three speeches were more scolding than praising. Moreover, several Nobel Laureates in Literature took the opportunity to express discontentment with political situation in their country or world or discontentment with the work of the Nobel Foundation.

epideictic (ceremonial) oratory ; acceptance speech ; Nobel prize ; Laureates in Literature

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