Quitting with Style: Linguistic Analysis of Political Resignation Speeches
Quitting with Style: Linguistic Analysis of Political Resignation Speeches

Summary/Abstract: Delivering effective and persuasive speeches is vital for politicians to keep themselves afloat in the political waters. Making a proper choice of words and expressions and constructing grammatically correct, and, sometimes, even syntactically atypical utterances on purpose to draw the attention to a specific point, are perhaps among the most necessary skills of both aspiring and well-established politicians. In other words, given that politics and language go hand in hand, a perfect mastery of language and very skillful language use are instrumental for all those who have entered the domain of politics. Practice has shown that politicians who are adept at using language effectively fare much better not only when it comes to obtaining and maintaining power, but when they have to relinquish power as well. In that respect, Chilton (2004) rightfully remarks that most political actors are normally acutely aware of the importance of their language use for their political career.

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