Rhetorical strategies and identity politics in the discourse of colonial withdrawal
John Flowerdew | City University of Hong Kong
Skilful use of the rhetorical tropes which typify the language of serious political occasions — described here as “rhetorical weight” — is closely associated with charismatic political leaders. This paper studies the political rhetoric of a skilled exponent of the art, Chris Patten, the last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, and shows how he used rhetorical weight to promote his political agenda. Detailed analysis of four segments of Patten’s political oratory, spread over the period of his five-year term of office, highlights his heavy use of the tropes of metaphor, antithesis, parallelism, actualisation, and the unities of time, place and action. The paper demonstrates how the use of these tropes related to Patten’s overall political goals and their manipulative nature within the context of his discursive construction of Britain’s imperial/national history and identity.
Keywords: identity politics, identity, national identity, rhetoric, political rhetoric, metaphor, antithesis, parallelism, actualization, the classical unities
Published online: 16 August 2002
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.1.1.09flo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.1.1.09flo
References
Atkinson, Max
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
Baumeister, Roy F.
Bender, John and Wellbery, David
Chilton, Paul
Cockroft, Robert and Cockroft, Susan M.
De Cillia, Rudolf, Reisigl, Martin and Wodak, Ruth
Fairclough, Norman
Fairclough, Norman and Wodak, Ruth
Flowerdew, John
undated). An interview with Kerry McGlynn, governor’s spokesperson and Edward Llewelyn, governor’s personal adviser. Manuscript. Author.
Fong, Bernard
Gilbert, G. Nigel and Mulkay, Michael
Guibernau, Montserrat
Hall, Stuart
Jakobson, Roman
Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo
Noonan, Peggy
Tannen, Deborah
Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Archakis, Argiris & Villy Tsakona
Archakis, Argiris & Villy Tsakona
Halmari, Helena
Kazemian, Bahram & Somayyeh Hashemi
Kazemian, Bahram & Qiang Zhou
Klymenko, Lina
Lin, Yuting, Meilin Chen & John Flowerdew
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.