A Ciceronian President? (Obama and rhetoric)

Jumping on a bandwagon to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of what I study:

Charlotte Higgins, 'The new Cicero'

It's worth reading the whole article. Here are some extracts using the geeky technical vocab which will be found in my thesis:

One of the best known of Cicero's techniques is his use of series of three to emphasise points: the tricolon. (The most enduring example of a Latin tricolon is not Cicero's, but Caesar's "Veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered.) Obama uses tricola freely. Here's an example: "Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy ..." In this passage, from the 2004 Democratic convention speech, Obama is also using the technique of "praeteritio" - drawing attention to a subject by not discussing it. (He is discounting the height of America's skyscrapers etc, but in so doing reminds us of their importance.)

[...]

Obama's favourite tricks of the trade, it appears, are the related anaphora and epiphora. Anaphora is the repetition of a phrase at the start of a sentence. Again, from November 4: "It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools ... It's the answer spoken by young and old ... It's the answer ..." Epiphora does the same, but at the end of a sentence. From the same speech (yet another tricolon): "She lives to see them stand out and speak up and reach for the ballot. Yes we can." The phrase "Yes we can" completes the next five paragraphs.

[...]

Steel also points out how Obama's oratory conforms to the tripartite ideal laid down by Aristotle, who stated that good rhetoric should consist of pathos, logos and ethos - emotion, argument and character. It is in the projection of ethos that Obama particularly excels.

things I have done recently

Today I cycled to church, thus making myself 20 minutes late. It would usually take me 10 to 15 minutes to walk. Cycling, it took me 10 minutes to sort myself out finding my helmet, unlocking my bike and getting ready to leave, then about 10 minutes to cycle to church and then 10 minutes - the length of three songs which I could hear from outside - trying to lock my bike (well, actually, to try to unlock the lock so that I could use it to lock up my bike). I cycled so that I would have my bike to get to Jenny's house for international lunch afterwards.

Afterwards, cycling to international lunch, I couldn't quite remember where Jenny's house was. I remembered I had to turn left off the main road at some point and then go round a bit, but couldn't remember where exactly to turn off, so went down about five side streets before I realised that I needed to be the other side of the railway bridge. At which point, the chain came off my bike so I walked the rest of the way. It thus took about 45 minutes to get to lunch - if I had been walking with a street map, I probably would have got there within about 20 minutes.

On leaving Jenny's house and walking my bike back, I would have forgotten my bike helmet if Jenny hadn't run after me with it. I had previously left my bike helmet at someone's house over the Christmas break, having cycled all the way back to my house before realising that I hadn't been wearing a helmet. I've also recently managed to lose a glove and a scarf.

Having left my dressing gown at home on my return to Cambridge after Christmas, I got my mum to post it to me. I think it was delivered twice. I remember picking it up last Sunday and then not being able to find it on Sunday evening. I couldn't find it on Monday either, but by Tuesday the parcel had reappeared in the porters' lodge at college.

Last weekend I spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning running across the town to try to find a working printer so I could print out some work to hand in for my supervisor.

Before Christmas, I managed on the same weekend to miss an appointment with the Reverend and Valiant Master of the Temple by forgetting my college gown and having to go back for it, nearly to miss a lift to a weekend away in Norfolk by waiting for 40 minutes in the wrong place (having arrived there late anyway and not being able to phone through because I hadn't been able to find my mobile that morning) and, on the weekend away, to wake up 10 minutes after I was supposed to be leading a prayer meeting.

Felicitously, none of these mattered too much: the first of these occasions was the chapel service preceding the college commemoration of benefactors dinner, and I decided it was a less noticeable breach of etiquette to be absent from the service, which many fellows absent themselves from anyway, than to turn up for dinner without a gown. With regard to the lift to Norfolk, an hour after we were due to have left I gave up waiting and, having remembered where I'd left my phone, began the half hour walk home to phone through to ask what I should do. Amazingly, as I came to an intersection, a car drew up and a voice called out "David, get in the car!" These were the people who had been waiting to pick me up and had just given up and started driving to Norfolk. As far as the prayer meeting was concerned, I managed to get dressed quickly and, having sung a song or two, people were forgiving and I was able to lead the prayer. One of the verses we used was Romans 13:11, which says "Now it is time to awake out of sleep".

Before Christmas, I also melted part of the tablecloth by putting a hot frying pan on it. I brought a Christmas card to give to someone but then found I couldn't write a message in it because I didn't have a working pen on me.

At home over Christmas I tried to charge some non-recyclable batteries in a battery recharger. Having left the charger on overnight, I retrieved the batteries, which I think were leaking a little battery acid over my hands. I also managed somehow to give myself a splinter from a cumin seed: there were some left in a baking tray and I picked one out to eat and stabbed my finger with it in such a way that the end snapped off and remained in my finger.