Figuralität und Persuasion. Barack Obamas Redekunst als Gegenstand interdisziplinärer und experimenteller Forschung

摘要

While there has been considerable discussion on "figurative” language in the larger sense, especially on cognitive aspects of metaphor, this article describes an interdisciplinary experiment which focuses on the narrower and more technical definition of figurality, i.e. on rhetorical figures as formal patterns of sound or composition (such as alliteration or anaphora) as opposed to rhetorical tropes as methods of indirect signification (such as metaphor or metonymy). In line with Greek and Roman theory on the threefold function of rhetorical language (lógos, páthos, éthos; docere, movere, conciliare) we hypothesize that figures have persuasive, affective and aesthetic effects on the reader of a text that can be determined individually as well as cumulatively. The experimental study is specifically devoted to the reception of rhetorical figures in political speeches, taking Barack Obama's "Acceptance Speech” as an example. By ‘de-activating' hundreds of figures in a single text, without affecting its imagery or semantics, we are able to measure differentially the degrees by which these figures enhance the effects on the recipients. In an additional experiment, we investigate how they condition the memorability of a text or its content. On the basis of classical theory (Gorgias, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian), integrating psychology and neuroscience, psychiatry and psychotherapy, we aim at defining an interdisciplinary research agenda for empirical and experimental as well as intercultural rhetoric