Richard Nixon's Irish Wake: A case of generic transference

1 June 1979

journal article
research article
Published by Taylor & Francis in Central States Speech Journal

Vol. 30 (2) , 164-173
https://doi.org/10.1080/10510977909368009

Abstract

Richard Nixon's ceremonial announcement of Gerald Ford as his Vice President‐designate constituted a rhetorical oddity, one in which all the trappings of a political ceremony were transported to a situation which neither invited nor demanded a ceremonial response. To assess the rhetorical appropriateness and persuasive potential of Richard Nixon's “Irish Wake,” this essay explores the concept of generic transportability. In explicating the prerhetorical forces which afforded Nixon access to the ceremonial medium and in analyzing the extent to which the ceremonial strategy was effectively enacted, this essay also discloses formal constraints of archetypal ceremonies and applies them to the “hybrid” ceremony performed by Nixon on October 12, 1973.

Keywords

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:

Absolutism and situation:Prolegomenato a rhetorical biography of Richard M. Nixon
Communication Monographs, 1976
The classical conception of epideictic
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1961
Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education
Published by Columbia University Press ,1957