Holy Mitt

Here we have Mitt Romney’s victory speech from Tuesday night, after winning the Florida primary with a 15% margin. It is a perfect example of a deliberative speech, and understandably so due to the clear political nature of it. While there is overwhelming evidence that it is deliberative, there are some questions I would like to relay off the audience before coming to conclusions.

 Romney starts listing his qualifications at about 3:48. While this is an understandable and obvious use of Ethos, he kind of goes overboard eventually. At 4:07, he makes a statement simply dripping with Ethos, concerning how he purportedly “saved the Olympics from scandal.” Despite the validity of such a statement, of COURSE he goes on to mention how “proud” the US Athletes made us. As much as I want a president that is good at complimenting American Athletes (since they don’t get enough praise as it is), it was politically irrelevant. Nonetheless, it credits his character well with his American audience. Furthermore, he discredits Obama all over the place. While it isn’t directly a boost to his character, it does degrade the credibility of his opponent, which makes him look better in comparison. Such plays to Ethos are typical of deliberative speeches, as we typically think of people we want changing the future of our country as people with credibility and character.

However, I do want to know… Could this speech be considered forensic in any way? Or even epideictic? He does reference the past quite a bit as far as his accomplishments are concerned, which seems forensic to me. Also, the whole reason for the speech seems Epideictic, as it is a ceremonial speech a politician gives to their supporters after a state votes in the primary. Is it possible for a speech to have elements of more than one type of speech, or am I just not grasping the concept correctly?