Historical Speech Research Articles

Talking fragmentation away – Decoding the ’whatever it takes’ effect

In 2022, the ECB introduced a new instrument designed to combat fragmentation in euro area government bond yields. To assess the ECB’s effectiveness in addressing fragmentation through existing instruments, particularly communication, we turn to a pivotal historical event – Mario Draghi’s famous “whatever it takes” speech. Widely interpreted as a commitment by the ECB to act as a lender of last resort, this speech eased tensions in bond markets. Employing state-of-the-art computational linguistics, we create an index that quantifies the ECB’s commitment to act as a lender of last resort based on this historic speech. Our index highlights the ECB’s central role in stabilizing financial markets, especially during periods of heightened uncertainty.

Transitivity in Pope Francis’ Speech in Morocco: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis

The way we speak and the words we choose to convey a certain message are not neutral. They are overloaded with certain meanings that represent our worldview, namely when delivered by most influential people like religious leaders and used in contexts which are ideologically constructed like that of the speech of Pope Francis with his symbolic power and role in religious diplomacy. The main aim of this study is to investigate the construction of experiential meanings in Pope Francis' historical speech during his apostolic journey to Morocco on March 19, 2019, by examining the specific linguistic choices employed. This study employs the transitivity model within the framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as its theoretical foundation for analysis. Precisely, using quantitative analysis, this paper endeavors to address two key questions: Firstly, what distributions and patterns of transitivity has Pope Francis utilized in constructing experiential meanings in his speech in Morocco? Second, what functions do the transitivity processes and each participant involved have in the delivered speech text, aiding the speaker in conveying their intention? The dataset comprises 182 clauses extracted from the aforementioned speech. The results of this study showed that Pope Francis employed six types of transitivity processes, totaling 186 processes. Yet, material processes, constituting 62%, and mental processes, comprising 15%, were identified as dominant, suggesting their significant roles in conveying vibrant information in his speech that aimed to enhance dialogue and foster friendly relations between Catholicism and Islam, promoting cooperation in the construction and establishment of a world characterized by sincere, courageous, and essential collaboration. The findings therefore indicate that transitivity choices play a crucial role in conveying implicit meanings.

Predictors of aspiration pneumonia: developing a new matrix for speech and language therapists.

The contributing factors of aspiration pneumonia have been well documented. However, there are gaps in the literature regarding identifying the weight associated with each factor and the relationship between factors. In this study, 20 potential predictors of aspiration pneumonia (with four additional variables) have been applied to historic Speech and Language Therapy records to greater understand the significance of each contributor of aspiration pneumonia. 152 cases with an oropharyngeal dysphagia, and a Speech and Language Therapy recommendation of eating and drinking with known aspiration and the associated potential risk of developing an aspiration pneumonia, were included in the data. These were inpatients and outpatients, and had various diagnoses but all had had a videofluoroscopy. Logistic regression analysis found seven factors that were individually significant in predicting the development of aspiration pneumonia with 84.93% sensitivity and 91.03% specificity DISCUSSION: Logistic regression and random forest analyses led to the proposal of a new matrix of predictors of aspiration pneumonia with respective scoring weights for individual and cumulative contributors (a direction for future research).

Making Sense of the Odes


 
 
 Prior to the emergence of the formalized commentarial traditions of the Early Imperial era (221 BCE–220 CE), the Odes seem typically to have been encountered “in motion” or “in use” as quoted speech in early historical and philosophical works. By studying the way the Odes are used in an understudied text—the Guoyu 國語 (Discourses of the states), probably compiled in the late Warring States era (ca. 475–221 BCE)—this article explores how historical speeches and anecdotes were used as an early form of commentary, variously contextualizing, explaining, paraphrasing, glossing, and interpreting the Odes. Before the invention of comprehensive, systematic commentaries associating each poem with a particular historical context and meaning, texts like the Guoyu provided early readers with guides to understanding and using classical texts, and many of their exegetical forms and strategies anticipate the commentarial traditions of the early empires. This article shows that historical speeches were one way in which early Chinese elites were trained in how to read and use the Odes appositely and sensitively, and that we can think of such speeches as a form of commentary.
 
 

‘The Wind of Change’: a rhetorical political analysis of Harold Macmillan’s 1960 ‘decolonization’ speech

This article contributes to the literature on Conservative Party politics through an exploration of the political rhetoric of former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, Harold Macmillan in relation to decolonization and the end of empire. Macmillan’s Wind of Change speech has been analysed in the existing literature as purely a historical moment in relation to imperial decline. This article contends that Macmillan’s arguments for and defence of decolonisation in fact remain relevant for modern understandings of contemporary Conservative Party politics because residual affections for imperialism remain within some conservative audiences, as well as the ongoing processes of decolonisation. He sought to address such sentiments at the time of delivery, yet they remain today amongst similar audiences who remain committed to imperial notions. As such, simply considering the speech as a historic moment is inadequate given its value as an enduring argument relevant to contemporary conservative debates. Because of the language and justification used, I re-evaluate the speech through the process of ‘Rhetorical Political Analysis’ (ethos, pathos, logos). By doing so, I will demonstrate how Macmillan’s historical speech remains relevant as a living argument for scholars and practitioners of Conservative Party politics, which is a perspective presently absent in the scholarship. This methodological approach is also augmented by an analysis of archival materials helping to shed light on the embeddedness of the speech within the broader context of the tumultuous South African politics of the time, and by doing so show why a speech delivered in the 1960s remains relevant to UK domestic policy, foreign policy, and conservative studies in the 2020s.

Direktive Sprechakte in frühneuzeitlichen Fremdsprachenlehrwerken

Abstract Early Modern foreign language textbooks and especially the model dialogues that are typical of such manuals are particularly valuable sources for historical pragmatics due to the imitation of oral communication. However, the potential of this source has hardly been exploited, especially for historical speech act analysis. This study will now, first, empirically investigate the realization patterns for directive speech acts in selected model dialogues from the 16th to 18th century. Second, on the basis of the results, a data-based evaluation of the authenticity and thus the potential of language learning dialogues as a source for historical linguistics will be made.

A Morphological Analysis of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I HAVE A DREAM” Speech: a Compositional Semantic Perspective

This research work has investigated the importance of linguistic morphology in the construction of new lexemes and grammatically conditioned words on the first hand and the way both derivational and inflectional morphemes function to carry and impart compositional meaning in text on the other. Premised on the objective of raising more awareness on the significance of morphological research, this paper has applied both the quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to the historic speech “I Have a Dream” by the African American civil rights figurehead Martin Luther King Jr. The scientific roadmap thus carved has led its process through the identification, labelling and numbering of the distinctive derivational (50 /40%) and inflectional (75 / 60%) morphemes. A furthering of the quantitative input has displayed an outstanding use of nominalisations with nouns derived from adjectives 17 [13.6%] and from verbs 12 [9.6%] with bound morphemes such as “ity”, “ice”, “ation”, “tion”, “or”, and “dom”. On the inflectional part, the prevailing use of regular and irregular plural number imparting morphemes (47 / 37.6%) together with tense inflections (16 / 12.8%) pair up to confirm, in a qualitative analytical approach, the ideological perspective of the speaker to include the largest anonymous members of the African American community as the intended beneficiaries of his unquenchable soft but vibrant battle for freedom. The use of tense indicating morphemes has revealed the presence of a threefold tense progression from the past tense (simple past and past perfect) to the simple present and then to the future. The crosscheck of the semantics of such morphemic operations has uncovered the perspective of Martin Luther King Jr for the logical representation of the sufferings of the Black community and liberation struggles in the past, the need to keep the battle going in the present time with the conviction of brighter days in the future.

Europe Whole and Free and the Global Zeitenwende

It is beyond doubt that the international world order as we have known it since the 1990s is changing. In Europe the clearest wakeup call of this new context – let alone the more frequent systemic challenges in the last decades – has been the Russian aggression against Ukraine. It needs the EU to adapt to the new realities which were labelled by Olaf Scholz “Zeitenwende” in his historic speech. The essay explores this historical context in the light of evolving dynamics of European integration, emphasising the concept of a “whole and free” Europe through continuous expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions, which was envisaged in George H. W. Bush’s also historic speech on the eve of the end of the Cold War. The essay touches upon the enduring debate on the geographical limits and institutional capacities of the European Union (EU) in relation to its position in the world order. The subsequent theoretical assessment aims to understand the challenges the EU faces, particularly in the context of potential enlargement, acknowledging the need for internal and external strength to navigate a changing geopolitical and geoeconomic environment. The essay refrains from normative statements on enlargement but asserts that a “wholer and freer” Europe could elevate the EU’s global influence, positioning it to shape the agenda of the “Zeitenwende”, and the emerging, hopefully still rule-based world order.

Performing identity entrepreneurship during the colonisation of New Zealand: A rhetorical construction of ‘loyal subjects of the Empire’

A thematic analysis of New Zealand’s historical Speeches from the Throne (10 speeches, from 1860-1899) investigated rhetorical strategies used by Governors during colonisation, to mobilise both settler and indigenous people’s participation in the British Empire. Identity leadership (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00246), augmented by critical theories of emotion (Williams, 1977, Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press) under the cultural framework of hierarchical relationalism (Liu, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12058) was applied to show how unequal but reciprocal relationships were invoked by Governors, as representatives of the Crown and advocates for the general public in New Zealand. Governors attempted to mediate a positive shared identity within the British Empire; but at the same time to isolate those who excluded from subjecthood by their hostility to the Crown. Governors alternated between efforts to mobilise people against indigenous Māori who challenged them, and offers to include Māori who conformed to the conventions required of a hierarchical relationship between Crown and subject. We reflect on how these dynamics of rhetorical performance may still be relevant today, especially in contexts of hierarchy and in the domain of leader-follower relations more broadly.

Licensing, Testing Disparities, and the Social Work Profession

Most readers will be familiar with the historical debates and contemporary outcomes of the consideration of whether social work is a profession. Following Abraham Flexner’s assertion in 1915 that social work is not a profession, the field has made sustained efforts to determine what separates it from other areas of practice and legitimize the practice of social work (see Daley & Pittman-Munke, 2021, for a description about this historical speech, its biases, and the field’s reaction to it). One component of this professionalization is licensure. Requiring social work licensure for practice is a mechanism of protecting the integrity and quality of social work services. The title of licensed social worker conveys a demonstration of competence for practice. In this century, professional licensure in the United States has primarily relied on an examination as one criterion, along with education, experience, and supervision (Dyeson, 2004). The use of a licensure examination is similar to those in allied professions such as teaching (Amanonce & Maramag, 2020), nursing (Oducado et al., 2019), and pharmacy (Park et al., 2021). As with any measure, though, a licensing exam may contain bias and other limitations (Aby, 2020).

“A ghost in the system”: French nuclear colonialism and the haunting of republicanism

While France claims to be the nation of universal human rights, its historical intimacy with imperialism would suggest otherwise. The discourse of Republicanism is therefore what allows France to erase and smooth out rhetorical and material incongruities, allowing it to retain its national integrity. This article thus examines the discursive continuities between two constitutive realms of French power: colonialism and nuclearism. I argue that, rather than being separate, these two matrices must be understood as one continuum traversed by the same questions. I analyze their conjoined structure through two historical speeches which both rely on universal Republicanism as justification: Jules Ferry’s 1885 intervention at the National Assembly defending his imperial legacy; and Charles de Gaulle's speeches in Papeete, in 1966, promising a radiant future to Tahiti in the postcolonial era. Republican universalism as a discursive tool, however, is not impervious to porousness: it is always haunted by the violence it inflicts and the peoples it affects. An attention to the ghosts that live inside the social fabric produced by this discourse, thus, helps us critically engage Republican universalism and reorganize the hidden, paradoxical aspects of French (post)colonial memory. Haunting, in other words, becomes a decolonial praxis for recovering what has been negated and interrupting the appearance of narrative cohesion that France relies upon.

Can central bank speeches predict financial market turbulence? Evidence from an adaptive NLP sentiment index analysis using XGBoost machine learning technique

Central Bank speeches usually function as aggregators of internal quantitative and qualitative analysis of the institutions regarding the macro economy, the monetary policy and the health of the financial systems. Speeches usually function as a summary of the current status of a countries economic health, the undergoing trends and some future perspectives of the global economy. In this study departing from classical econometrics we employ natural language processing technologies in combination with machine learning techniques in order to filter out the most important signals in the corpus of speeches and translate into a sentiment index for forecasting the future financial markets behaviour. In our analysis, it is evident that central banker's expectations on economy tend to exhibit a predictive ability for financial markets turmoil. Using a combination of dictionaries which are either predefined or build based on historical speeches of the corpus we train an Extreme Gradient Boosting model that generates a sentiment index which signals turmoil with acceptable accuracy when passing a specific threshold.

Determining the historical significance of the farewell sermon of the Prophet (PBUH) in context of demand of the time

In the 10th Hijrah, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) performed Hajj (pilgrimage) only once in his life and delivered his historic 'Farewell Sermon' for the liberation and welfare of the world humanity. This paper explores the importance and significance of the sermon in the context of its historical demand and its place in the world civilisation. The article also attempts to review historically on speaker, time and application of the speech to determine its place in perspective of world history and Islamic history as well. The methodology of the paper followed a qualitative approach comprised of the secondary source. It is argued that the sermon is the only historic speech in the world that incomparable provisions on liberation and welfare of humanity till the Final Day. The ultimate implication of the magnificent sermon is sustained ensuring its time was momentous and eventful; the more appropriate time cannot be estimated. Thus, according to historical analysis, the farewell sermon of the Final Apostle (PBUH) is the demand of time intimately and significantly that relevant to today’s life and society. IIUC Studies Vol.17, December 2020: 55-72

Introduction: UNSCOM and the future of WMD verification

Many people will remember Colin Powell’s historic speech to the UN Security Council describing Iraq’s mobile production facilities for making biological weapons. Many will also remember that shortl...

Observing an Anniversary: The 400 Years of Inequality Project

The 400 Years of Inequality Project was launched in 2016 by five partner organizations: the University of Orange, a people's university in Orange, New Jersey;the New School and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, both in New York City;ONE DC, a Washington, DC-based organization working to advance racial and economic equity;and, Voices of a People's History, a not-for-profit organization located in Brooklyn, New York, that increases awareness of US history through public readings of historical speeches and other texts. AtTulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, faculty, students, and community representatives discussed concerns related to mass incarceration. The School of Public Health at Boston University hosted a symposium on racism in housing and education, exhibited the 400 Years of Inequality Timeline in its Activist Lab (a venue for developing innovative ways to dismantle the injustices that produce and sustain inequities), and convened storytelling sessions on the topic of inequality with artist-in-residence RhodessaJones.

Federalism in U.S. and India: A Comparative Study

This research work focus on the comparative study of federalism in India and in u. S. The paper analyses the form of state of the federal Indian union, which is typical in the “landscape” of comparative constitutional law. The trend towards centralization of function powers, both at federal and state levels, probably constitutes some sort of quasi-federalism. The constitution of India has not described India as federation. Dr. Ambedkar listed several features of the draft constitution which mitigated the rigidity and legalism of federalism in his historic speech in the constituent assembly in November 1949. The first U. S constitution, the articles of confederation, promoted a confederation of the states with very decentralized power concentrated at the state level and a weak central government. The articles were not successful and the 1787 constitutional convention convened to make changes in our governmental structure. Rather than tweaking the confederation structure, a third option was essentially invented–what we call today a federal system or federalism. The federal design divides power between multiple levels of government–often state and national. As defined, federalism is an institutional arrangement creating relatively autonomous levels of government each able to act directly on behalf of the people with granted authority.

BUZAUL IN THE TIME OF TUDOR VLADIMIRESCU – GHEORGHILAŞ PANDUR, THE OUTLAW FROM THE CURVE OF THE CARPATHIANS

Through his activity, Tudor Vladimirescu left a strong impression on his contemporaries from Buzau and their descendants. Because they were at the crossroads connecting Muntenia, Moldova, Transylvania and Dobrogea, the people of Buzau suffered deeply from the chaotic confrontations between Arnauts, Etherists and Turks. However, aware of the importance of the ideas promoted by Theodor from Vladimiri, beyond the immediate failure of these principles, the inhabitants of Buzău honored the great hero, attributing his name to schools and boulevards, mentioning him in official historical speeches and popular ballads. Pandurul Gheorghilaş, who became an outlaw, continued the spirit of actions covered by the need for justice and fairness of Tudor Vladimirescu's social program, in the mountain area of Buzău county.

Феномен глупоти: від політичного хаосу до політичного раціоналізму

When the world was in the midst of the First World War in the early twentieth century, and the Russian Empire was showing unpreparedness for war, inflation and protest mood inside the country, on October 1, 1916 at a State Duma Cadet leader Pavel Milyukov delivered a historic speech. He reminded members of parliament of 1915, the year of the political crisis, when a commission of inquiry was set up against Defense Minister Volodymyr Sukhomlynov, who was considered a traitor due to his defeat on the fronts. Sukhomlinov was fired, and the hated Boris Sturmer was appointed Minister of the Interior and later Minister of Foreign Affairs. Therefore, the confidence in the government, which for some time was established among the military, in 1916 was lost again. Pavlo Milyukov, referring to the foreign press, pointed to Germany’s awareness of Russia’s strategic policy and the sabotage of the Russian government in organizing a reliable rear and military offensive at the front. "When the Duma insists with increasing persistence that the rear must be organized for a successful struggle, and the authorities continue to say that to organize means to organize a revolution, and consciously prefers chaos and disorganization, what is it, stupidity or betrayal?" – P. Milyukov addressed such a question to the members of the Duma [4]. The natural inability of the government to organize institutional activities and the senseless policy of political leaders as a practical incompetence of political management, raises the question of understanding the phenomenon of stupidity in the political dimension. The purpose of this article is to find out the political nature of stupidity.

The Untimely Subject: Reporting Discourse and Bearing Witness in Villehardouin's 'La Conquête de Constantinople' and Yannick Haenel's 'Jan Karski'

This article examines the use of reported discourse in Villehardouin's La Conquete de Constantinople (c. 1210), offering a comparison to Robert de Clari's text of the same name. The radical shift in direct speech across the first and second halves of the text is explored in relation to three existing interpretations put forward by scholars, before a fourth one is proposed that places new emphasis on the processes of memory and text-making behind the composition of the Conquete. Villehardouin's status as eyewitness, and the importance this has for the nature of his chronicle, is then analysed through a reading of the 2009 novel Jan Karski by YannickHaenel, whose playful, distortional treatment of historical speech and metacommentary on the act of bearing witness have important implications for the temporality and discursive features of the medieval text.

The history of architecture at a glance: some notes on architectural models and the construction of the historical speeches between Paris and London at the time of the revolutions (1790-1830)

Au XVIIIe siecle, l’expansion d’horizons theoriques et culturels propre a la conception universaliste des Lumieres conduit a une nouvelle vision sur l’histoire globale de l’architecture. Les voyages pittoresques et la redecouverte des civilisations du passe amenent un riche ensemble de modeles architecturaux qu’il convient de classer et comparer dans une perspective souvent historique. C’est ainsi que le parallele graphique s’est consolide pour proposer au public une histoire visuelle abregee de l’art de bâtir a partir de laquelle, a la fin du siecle, on commence a imaginer des espaces d’exposition d’architecture comparee. Ainsi, la maquette d’architecture est devenue un element pedagogique fondamental dans les differentes initiatives de creation de discours historiques sur l’origine et l’evolution de cette discipline artistique. Dans cet article, nous etudions une serie d’initiatives qui melangent les ideaux pedagogiques, politiques et culturels, menees autour de l’amenagement de galeries de maquettes et la construction de discours historiques entre Paris et Londres au tournant du XIXe siecle.