论文部分内容阅读
J odie Foster's 'coming out' speech at the Golden Globes was beautiful. And it wasn't just what she said that impressed her audience， but the clever， elegant way she used the power of rhetoric to get her point across.
It's a considerable thing to deliver a speech that is at once artfully put together and emotionally affecting. At the Golden Globes—where in accepting the Cecil B DeMille award for lifetime achievement， she made the first public acknowledgement of her sexuality—Jodie Foster managed both. What's striking is not what the speech gave away， but the control and delicacy with which it delivered its payload.
The art of rhetoric is， at root， about the relationship between a speaker and an audience. Foster had just been given a gong， and her audience consisted of peers in the industry in which， as she said， she has worked for 47 years. They didn't take much winning. They were on her side. They were paying attention.
But Foster didn't just take their attention for granted. She played with it. First she drew them closer—singling out a few by name， "Robert ... Susan ... Phil ... Aida ... Scott"—then embraced them all as "my family of sorts".
She teased their expectations. First she offered a run of memories： "Executives， producers， the directors， my fellow actors out there， we've giggled through love scenes， we've punched and cried and spit and vomited and blown snot all over one another …"
By using anaphora （"we've giggled ... we've punched"） and polysyndeton （all those ands）， she made the sentence sound loose， spontaneous， a little out of control. Then she spiked the sentimentality with a joke： "Those are just the co-stars I liked." One of the strongest， most confident ethos appeals you can make—and it's a brave one because the consequences of failure are high—is to make a joke.
Writ large， that's the same technique she used when she approached the meat of her speech. "So while I'm here being all confessional， I guess I have a sudden urge to say something that I've never really been able to air in public，" she said. "Sudden urge"， my foot. Every ear was bent. Was she about to say the thing everyone has been waiting for her to say for decades？
She teased it out. She appeared to hesitate. She affected to be nervous—and in so doing， of course， ratcheted up the levels both of tension and of attention. "But I'm just going to put it out there， right？ Loud and proud， right？ So I'm going to need your support on this. I am， ah，"—beat pause—"single."
It's a considerable thing to deliver a speech that is at once artfully put together and emotionally affecting. At the Golden Globes—where in accepting the Cecil B DeMille award for lifetime achievement， she made the first public acknowledgement of her sexuality—Jodie Foster managed both. What's striking is not what the speech gave away， but the control and delicacy with which it delivered its payload.
The art of rhetoric is， at root， about the relationship between a speaker and an audience. Foster had just been given a gong， and her audience consisted of peers in the industry in which， as she said， she has worked for 47 years. They didn't take much winning. They were on her side. They were paying attention.
But Foster didn't just take their attention for granted. She played with it. First she drew them closer—singling out a few by name， "Robert ... Susan ... Phil ... Aida ... Scott"—then embraced them all as "my family of sorts".
She teased their expectations. First she offered a run of memories： "Executives， producers， the directors， my fellow actors out there， we've giggled through love scenes， we've punched and cried and spit and vomited and blown snot all over one another …"
By using anaphora （"we've giggled ... we've punched"） and polysyndeton （all those ands）， she made the sentence sound loose， spontaneous， a little out of control. Then she spiked the sentimentality with a joke： "Those are just the co-stars I liked." One of the strongest， most confident ethos appeals you can make—and it's a brave one because the consequences of failure are high—is to make a joke.
Writ large， that's the same technique she used when she approached the meat of her speech. "So while I'm here being all confessional， I guess I have a sudden urge to say something that I've never really been able to air in public，" she said. "Sudden urge"， my foot. Every ear was bent. Was she about to say the thing everyone has been waiting for her to say for decades？
She teased it out. She appeared to hesitate. She affected to be nervous—and in so doing， of course， ratcheted up the levels both of tension and of attention. "But I'm just going to put it out there， right？ Loud and proud， right？ So I'm going to need your support on this. I am， ah，"—beat pause—"single."