Speech style as political capital: Barack Obama’s Athens speech

Abstract

This paper provides a speech stylistic analysis of Barack Obama’s 2016 Athens speech, and it argues for a culturally conscious take on speech style, which links it to the accumulation of political capital, at least in the context of political speeches. With a focus on stance and intertextuality, the main argument put forward is that Obama constructs a dialogue with Ancient Greek thought, which does not simply draw on experiences and events; rather, it recreates them and, eventually, it creates a whole understanding of cultural politics. Against this take on politics based heavily on Greek democracy legacy, for Obama, his performance serves as his consignment to the global political discourse through an effort to join a very well established and highly respected democratic tradition stemming from (Ancient) Greece, whose sociocultural impact is felt vividly in contemporary US. In this sense, his accumulation of political capital serves as his effort to achieve posthumous fame (ystero’fimia) after his stepping down from the US administration.