LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:11 November 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Rhetorical Addressee in Political Discourse

B.V. Ramaprasad, Ph.D.

Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of rhetorical addressee. Rhetorical addressee is someone who though not present during the speech event is constructed as the ratified addressee, that is, addressee who is present during the speech event and is able to respond. A Political speech by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is used to illustrate the concept.

Keywords: Listener roles, rhetorical addressee, ratified addressee, Prime Minister Modi, political speech.

Introduction

This paper discusses the concept of rhetorical addressee and illustrates it with an example from a political speech from India. Rhetorical addressee overlaps and cuts across the different listener roles that have been suggested in the study of conversational organisation. The paper begins by exploring the different listener roles that have been suggested so far and summarises them. Then the paper analyses portions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's (here onwards referred to as P.M.) election speech in West Bengal (see Nagpal 2021, for a report on the speech and ‘On 2 May 'Didi jaachhe', says PM Modi’ 2021for full video) where he used the phrase ‘Didi, o Didi’ (“Sister, you sister”) to refer to the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee (here onwards referred to as C.M.). I try to show that whereas the crowd is constructed as ‘ratified addressees’ (Dynel, 2010), the C.M. is sometimes constructed as a ‘rhetorical addressee’ in this speech.

Listener Roles in Discourse: Literature Review

As Goodwin, 1981 says, “The activity of conversation provides a set of positions for the participants, the most salient being speaker and hearer” ( p.4). I will now make an attempt to look at the possible hearer/listener positions that a conversation may provide. There have been many attempts to define listener roles in conversation. Goodwin, 1981 makes a distinction between participants and non-participants. “… anyone engaged in a conversation’’ is a participant and those who are “… not part of a relevant conversation” (p.3) are non-participants. Goffman, 1981 opines that “When a word is spoken all those who happen to be in the perceptual range of the event will have some participatory status relative to it (p.3)”.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


B.V. Ramaprasad, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Post Graduate Studies in English
Kuvempu University
Shankaraghatta, Shivamogga District
Karnataka, India 577451
ram.prasad.u@gmail.com
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