オバマ氏の演説について〜言葉の力とかそんなかんじ〜

keywords: community of improvisation, interpretative community, interpretative anthropology, mass media


夜中にNHKのオバマの演説を特集した番組を見ました。
オバマの演説を見るのはほとんど初めてでしたが、
なんかすっごい面白かったしフツウに感動もしました!


His speech was very interesting to me in that he could unite the people of America, or at least the people at the speech; by successfully sharing with those people one huge story of "the United States of America". By continuously telling a life story of a particular American citizen and use it as a metaphorical example of the nation's history, he was able to let each individual see the great story of the nation as his/her own matter. And that's when he succeeded in sharing the narrative with people there and the whole crowd became as one. And that's when those people could feel like "yes, WE can".

I felt a dynamic interaction among the people there and even among the people beyond the TV screen. It might be true that they had shared the American History before the speech started. However, a community can be tied or united, and in the first place can be composed, "not merely through shared ideas but through a sense of mutual gaze and mutual response."(as Carrithers and Marchin said in 1996) They surely shared many features of the national history beforehand, but if that was what it's all about, the crowd could not have gone so wild and there could not have been such a strong atmosphere. By effectively using so-called symbolical "landmarks" that are widely accepted among the society, and with the consciousness of the interlocutors in the occasion, Barack Obama composed a strong, persuasive narrative. And so he could get together as "one people" with the people around him.

なんかうまくまとまりませんが(笑)とりあえずとてもおもしろかったです。
まぁ番組のコメンテーター的な人もゆってたけど言葉の力ってミステリアスだなーと。

今後もっと深く考えてみよう。。。



literature cited;

Speech at the election night. @chicago




Machin, D and Carrithers, M
1996 From 'interpretative communities' to 'communities of improvisation'. Media, Culture and Society, 18:343-352