For linguistics, political speeches offer the appropriate chance to observe the effects of communication due to their focus on contents and topical variety. The discussion of individual communication phenomena may lead to an inexact result though if those are not linked to context and reception, and furthermore to a critical evaluation. In this book, the approaches of text and discourse analysis are combined with the instruments of rhetoric, effect aesthetics, and reception research. Due to this combination, reliable results can be achieved for the production of a text as well as for its construction and final reception. The methodological approach is evaluated on contemporary and literary political speeches in a new comparison: Strategies of effecting are presented, and the changing conditions for contemporary political speeches are examined. The rhetorical discourse analysis and the exemplary observations may provide a theoretical and a practical usage for linguistics and the philologies as well as for all disciplines that must be capable of researching, evaluating, and planning the effects of speeches and communication.

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