Rhetoric

Sam Leith considers the divisions between British and American rhetoric ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

American and British rhetoric were always going to be different. The reason pre-dates both countries, as it has to do with the roots of rhetoric itself. The foundation-stone of persuasive speech is what Aristotle in the 4th century BC described as the "ethos" appeal. Before pathos (the attempt to sway emotions) and logos (the appeal to reason) comes the speaker's self-presentation. Establishing your bona fides is the sine qua non of a successful attempt to persuade.

This involves concerns that belong to no culture or nation in particular: the ability to project trustworthiness, expertise and sincerity. Rhetoric involves persuading listeners that in the matter at hand, the speaker's interests are in line with those of his audience.

On a deeper level, rhetoric also involves cultural specifics. As tribal creatures, we will trust a speaker who seems to be "one of us". This means a speaker must also display shared cultural assumptions, which involves conscious and unconscious allusions, references and cadences. George Bernard Shaw's observation that Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language is acutely relevant here.

When a politician speaks of a "finest hour", for example, this resonates more profoundly for a British audience than an American one, thanks to Winston Churchill’s wartime speech. The word "liberty", however, is more loaded among Americans owing to its place in the country's founding documents. Yet the word "liberal" means something entirely different in the two countries; in America it's become a boo-word, associated with tax-and-spend leftists, whereas in Britain it's a badge of pride, used to label those who believe in economic freedom and the power of the individual.

Despite the constitutional separation of church and state in America, political rhetoric there is full of religion. Yet in Britain, where an established church still holds power—at least notionally—the prime minister does not "do God", as Alastair Campbell, a journalist and a former director of communications for Tony Blair, famously warned journalists. In America the evangelical tradition is a part of mainstream culture, and the Calvinistic idea of manifest destiny remains a powerful strand in the national subconscious. So these concepts are available, emotionally and idiomatically, to American speakers in a way that they are not in Britain. The rhetoric of American evangelism can and does resonate in Britain, given the right audience, but it occupies a different place in the culture.

When looking at political speeches, there is far more enthusiasm for the high style in American public life than among the British. Barack Obama sailed to power using rhetoric that would have had satirists sharpening their pens and the electorate laughing had it issued from the mouth of David Cameron. "The authority and grandeur that come with the office allow a president to say things that a prime minister cannot," observed Blair's former speechwriter Philip Collins. "If David Cameron started saying 'Yes we can', there would be a resounding pantomime chorus of 'Oh no we can't'." Indeed. And the "oh" with which he precedes the imagined rejoinder, incidentally, is classically British: the joke doesn't work in a country without a tradition of panto.

In part, this is a reflection of our different political traditions. British political debate is intrinsically dialogic—or, more commonly, argumentative. Its policy-making unit is, at least notionally, the cabinet and its legislature is set up as a back-and-forth across the dispatch box. The great set-piece speech is hard to make when order papers are being rustled and the opposite benches are heckling and jeering. Blair's attempts to cultivate a "presidential" style were widely derided.

Winston Churchill’s high style came into its own only during the second world war. His default bombast was mocked in the House of Commons before the war and even during it. "Fight on the beaches" was, according to one civil servant, "blasted rhetoric"; with "their finest hour" he was "not on his best form", according to a Tory colleague. Where such phrases became immortal was through the more presidential outlet of the wireless. His rhetorical style fitted British political discourse only when he became a war leader.

But even what counts as high style is different between the two countries. Churchill's orotundities were Elizabethan, whereas American orators reach not for Shakespeare, but for the cadences of the country's founders and of the Bible. Obama's election speeches were seeded with verbal echoes of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

If the rhetorical style of British political broadcasting might be characterised as aggressive scepticism—typified by the jabs and sneers of John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman—American broadcast politics tends to grand pronouncements. Anyone seen ranting on screen in Britain is regarded as suspicious and possibly unhinged. Screeds on American television are most often delivered by a show's host. This holds for the Bill O'Reillys and Glenn Becks on Fox News, but also for the sententious, moralising style of a Keith Olbermann, channelling Edward R. Murrow on the leftist end of the spectrum.

The clichés of transatlantic difference—Britons as oblique, ironic and humorous; Americans as self-confident, sincere and aspirational—are ubiquitous in approaches to persuasive speech. Self-deprecation is a conventional tool in Britain; naked self-belief works better in America, as befits a country where the master narrative is that the goods go to those who deserve them.

Even in an age of global branding, watching ten minutes of advertisements in Britain and America offers a very different feel for how a product is sold. Take Victor Kiam's classic 1979 razor ad: "I liked it so much I bought the company". That may have aired in Britain, but its sentiment at the time only seemed to make sense with an American accent.

Sam Leith is a journalist and critic who writes regularly for the Guardian, theSpectator, the Wall Street Journal and the Evening Standard. His book about rhetoric "You Talkin' To Me?" is out now.