Synthetic personalization of Barack Obama at the 2008 US Democratic National Convention: a social semiotic multimodal analysis of a staged political context

Abstract

This article sets out to investigate how represented social actors can be related multimodally to addressees in political contexts that are staged specially for public and media consumption. Drawing on Van Leeuwen’s theoretical assumption in Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (2008) on the different kinds of ‘symbolic’ relations that can be constructed between represented social actors and viewers, and Lemke’s (1998) view, cited by Jewitt in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (2009), on the different ways resources from different semiotic modes can ‘interact’ with one another within a multimodal ensemble, this article adopts a social semiotic approach to the multimodal analysis of the staged political context of the 2008 US Democratic National Convention, focusing its analysis, in particular, on the multimodal construction of relations between Barack Obama and the American people viewing the event. In an area in which very little research on the multimodal construction of relations between represented social actors and addressees in staged political contexts has been done, this article provides a starting point for the understanding of this discursive phenomenon and, in so doing, makes an original and significant contribution to the fields of social semiotics and multimodality.

Keywords

Barack Obama Democratic National Convention intermodal alignment intermodal relations multimodality representation of social actors social semiotics symbolic relations synthetic personalization Van Leeuwen

Introduction

Public opinion can, assumedly, be influenced by how political leaders are related multimodally to addressees in staged political contexts, which can importantly translate into support (or lack thereof) of the political leaders. Yet, no discourse and multimodal research, to the best of my knowledge, has ventured into the domain of studying multimodal constructions of relations in such contexts. Indeed, despite such discursive constructions’ capacity to ‘persuade’ us and ‘change our minds’ (Van Dijk, 1993: 254), we know little about the discursive processes by which these ‘symbolic’ relations (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 141) are constructed. For this reason, this article aims to provide a starting point for both laypersons and scholars alike to understand these discursive processes. The research question directing this article, therefore, is ‘How are represented social actors related multimodally to addressees in a given political context?’ Political contexts that would be of particular interest to this article are those that are staged for media and public consumption: for example, national party conventions, election victory speeches and national day rally speeches.

Theoretical assumptions

Theoretical assumptions can provide a study with useful perspectives, or a lens, through which to examine an object of study (Trent University, nd). In this part of the ‘Introduction’ section then, I shall feature (and justify too) three theoretical assumptions – from the multimodality literature – that this article uses to investigate how represented social actors are related multimodally to addressees in a given political context.

The first theoretical assumption that this article uses to inform its investigation is that semiotic modes within a multimodal ensemble interact with and contribute to one another (Jewitt, 2009b: 25). According to Lemke (1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25), these multimodal interactions can take three forms: intermodal alignment,¹ intermodal complementarity and intermodal contradiction. This theoretical assumption, which offers insights into the interplay between semiotic modes within a multimodal ensemble, is exactly what this study needs to draw on in order to understand and discover how resources from different semiotic modes ‘interact’ (Lemke, 1998: 105) with one another to co-construct relations between represented social actors and addressees.

The second theoretical assumption that this article uses to inform its investigation is that ‘modal resources can be used by [sign-makers] in a given … social context’ (Jewitt, 2009a: 30) to serve their interest.² Indeed, this theoretical assumption, which sees ‘sign-making as a social process’ (p. 30), will direct this article at approaching the analysis of the data from a social semiotic multimodal perspective (Jewitt, 2009a), thus focusing the analysis on investigating ‘which [semiotic] options are chosen’ by sign-makers to construct particular relations between represented social actors and addressees in the context of the 2008 US Democratic National Convention (DNC), ‘why these choices are made’, ‘what interests are served by them’ and ‘what purposes are achieved’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008a: 32). As a result, the findings generated from this approach to analysis will provide a clear and direct answer to the research question that underlies this article.

Last but not least, the third theoretical assumption that this article uses to inform its investigation is that semiotic resources can be employed to construct three dimensions of relations between a represented social actor and addressees: social distance, social relation and social interaction (Van Leeuwen, 2008b). In all three dimensions, the relation is of course ‘symbolic’ (p. 141), that is, the constructed relation between the represented social actor and addressees does not necessarily reflect the actual relation. In more concrete terms, this means that whatever the actual relation between the addressees and represented social actor is, addressees can be made to see the represented social actor as though he or she is just ‘like us’ or ‘close to us’ (i.e. not ‘distant from us’), as though he or she is socially ‘equal with us’ (i.e. not ‘social above or below us’ ) or as though he or she is ‘in interaction with us’ (i.e. not ‘unengaged with us’) (Van Leeuwen, 2008b). This theoretical assumption, which offers insights into the different kinds of ‘symbolic’ relations a represented social actor can have with addressees, is exactly what this article needs to not only understand the nature of such constructed relations, but also to ‘frame’ (Van Dijk, nd: para 15) its analysis in an ‘explicit [and] systematic’ (para 10) manner. Additionally, associated with this theoretical assumption is an analytical tool (the Representation and Viewer Network, Van Leeuwen, 2008b) that can provide this article with the ‘grammar’ (i.e. ‘What can be said?’, Van Leeuwen, 2008a: 23) to discover and describe, in terms of ‘theoretically based categories of structure and … strategy’ (Van Dijk, nd: para 15), how represented social actors can be related, multimodally, with addressees in a given political context. Figure 1 below shows how this analytical tool, with its ‘theoretically based categories of structure and … strategy’, looks like diagrammatically.

Figure 1.

The Representation and Viewer Network (Van Leeuwen, 2008b). (Member of STM Permission Guidelines, Oxford, 2008).

Method

Description of data

The 2008 US DNC played a crucial role in Barack Obama’s election campaign because it was an enormous, widely televised media event that allowed the Democratic Party and Barack Obama to connect with and influence tens of millions of voters simultaneously (CBS News, 2009). In addition, given that Election Day was only two months away from the convention, it was also one of the few remaining opportunities left for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama to work their way into voters’ hearts and minds.

The 2008 US DNC was held in Denver, Colorado, from 25 to 28 August 2008, at the Pepsi Centre. During the course of the 4-day convention, 11 principal³ and 54 non-principal Democrat speakers spoke before viewers and, unlike past democratic national conventions, were ‘unified, disciplined and optimistic’ (NBC News, 2009) in promoting and endearing their presidential candidate (i.e. Barack Obama) to the viewers.

On day 1 of the convention, the convention chair, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, spoke. Subsequently, Senator Edward Kennedy, brother of John F Kennedy, 35th president of America, made a surprise appearance to promote Barack Obama too. On day two, Hillary Clinton and Mark Warner were the principal speakers. Then, on the third day, Barack Obama officially received the nomination for president when his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, interrupted the official roll call to move that Barack Obama be selected as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee by acclamation (Nagourney, 2008). Soon after, Joe Biden accepted the vice presidential nomination and gave a speech for the first time as the vice presidential nominee (Nagourney, 2008). Subsequently, two political heavyweights, John Kerry (2004 Democratic presidential nominee) and Bill Clinton (42nd President of America) threw their weight behind the newly nominated presidential candidate, Barack Obama. Finally, on the last day, the convention moved from the Pepsi Centre to Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium where a bigger venue and elaborately designed stage awaited Barack Obama to deliver his acceptance speech.⁴,⁵

Barack Obama’s acceptance speech attracted 84,000 people to Mile High Stadium and another 40 million to their television sets all across America – this is more than the number who watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics (CBS News, 2009). It was a day full of symbolism: 28 August 2012, the day on which Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech, coincided with the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at Lincoln Memorial (NBC News, 2009) where the revered civil rights leader called for democracy, equality and racial reconciliation (DuBrin, 2013). And, exactly 45 years later, Barack Obama epitomized the realization of Martin Luther King’s dream by becoming the first African American ever selected by a major political party in America as its presidential nominee (Clayton, 2010).

Data selection

A day before the convention began, the two rival presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, were tied at 45 percent in the Gallup poll daily tracking results (Gallup, 2008b). Polling conducted one day after the convention, however, showed Barack Obama coming out of the convention with a 49 percent to 41 percent lead over John McCain (Gallup, 2008a). Doubtless, this striking change in poll results and the shift in the public’s perception of Barack Obama strongly suggest that discursive strategies had been employed with much success at the staged political context to represent Barack Obama in a manner that related him positively with the voters viewing the event. It is exactly for this reason that the 2008 US DNC fulfils the most important criterion for data selection: it exhibits the phenomenon that this article is interested in investigating. Thus, analyses of the 2008 US DNC data can generate findings that answer the research question that drives this article.

The second reason the 2008 US DNC is chosen as data is that the findings generated from the analyses can bring multimodal and discourse researchers ‘to a [deep] understanding of the complex [phenomenon]’ (Soy, 1997: para 1) in question. This is because the 2008 US DNC, in my view, is a critical case (Flyvbjerg, 2001), that is, a case that is ‘rich in information’ (p. 78), therefore able to help researchers ‘achieve the greatest amount of information on [the] … phenomenon’ (p. 77).⁶ In addition, according to Flyvbjerg (2001), choosing a critical case such as the 2008 US DNC as data, instead of ‘a representative case or random sample … [that] is not richest in information’ (p. 78), can greatly amplify the generalizability of the case study in question (p. 77).

Third, although there are other political contexts that (1) could provide data that exhibits the phenomenon that this article is interested in investigating, and (2) are cases that are ‘rich in information’ (p. 78), which is relevant to the object of this article’s investigation, the 2008 US DNC was eventually selected over them as data because of the historic, cultural and political significance of the event. Indeed, the historic nature of the 2008 US DNC was not to be denied: Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in front of 84,000 people on the night of 28 August 2008, thereby making him the first African American ever selected by a major political party in America as its presidential nominee (NBC News, 2009). Also, given that Barack Obama went on to win the presidency and become the first ever African American president of the United States, understanding how the 2008 US DNC, a crucial set piece in Barack Obama’s election campaign for the White House – as explained in the ‘Description of Data’ section earlier – contributed to this historic shift in American politics and culture makes a compelling reason for selecting this political context over other political contexts as data for this article.

Method of data collection

The 2008 US DNC data is collected from three primary sources: (1) transcriptions of speeches delivered by the 11 principal Democrat speakers at the 4-day convention; (2) digital video recordings of the convention; and (3) digital photo-logs of the convention. The primary data sought from these three sources is semiotic resources involved in the multimodal construction of relations between Barack Obama and the American people being addressed. Typical of the data that will be coded are resources from the semiotic modes of verbal language, visuals and kinesics. This primary data collected from speech transcriptions, video recordings and digital photo archives, where appropriate, will be supplemented with secondary data collected from books, news stories, opinion editorials, documentaries, surveys and official documents related to the 2008 US DNC and Barack Obama.

Method of data analysis

This article’s analytical procedure, similar to discourse and multimodal analysis, is in essence, a hermeneutic process (Meyer, 2009), in which the aforementioned Representation and Viewer Network (Van Leeuwen, 2008b), with its ‘theoretically based categories of structure and … strategy’ (Van Dijk, nd: para 15), is used as a descriptive framework to develop explanatory schemas that describe, in an ‘explicit [and] systematic’ (para 10) manner, how represented social actors can be related, multimodally, to addressees in a given political context. And since a criticism sometimes made of discourse and multimodal analysis is that: (1) it can seem rather ‘impressionistic in its analysis’ (Jewitt, 2009b: 30) due to the ‘interpretative and explanatory’ (Van Dijk, 2001: 353) nature of its hermeneutic process; and (2) it can be influenced by researchers themselves (Harper, 2003) (e.g. ideological position, political affiliation, personal feelings, ethnicity, gender and religion), I shall, where possible, ensure my analyses are (i) justified by reference to the data, (ii) supported with evidence from other sources and (iii) not influenced by any ideological position, personal feelings towards the subjects, etc., that I might have.⁷ Overall, this integrated approach to analysis would develop interpretations/findings that are not only rigorous, but also unbiased.

Analysis

Social distance

To begin the analytic discussion, I will first discuss how represented social actors can be related, multimodally, to addressees in a given political context in terms of social distance (Van Leeuwen, 2008b).

When a represented social actor is related to viewers in terms of social distance, the viewers can be made to see him or her as either just ‘like [us]’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 145) or ‘close to us’ (p. 141). In the case of the former, the represented social actor is related to viewers as though he or she is similar in some way(s) to the viewers; viewers, as a result, feel a sense of fellowship with the represented social actor. As for the latter, a represented social actor is related to viewers, not as a ‘stranger’ (p. 138), but as someone whom the viewers feel close to; in other words, viewers feel a sense of intimacy with the represented social actor.

Just like us. One way to relate a represented social actor to the viewers as just ‘like [us]’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 145), verbally and achieve the discursive effect of making the viewers not feel ‘distant’ (p. 138) from the represented social actor, but a sense of ‘fellow[ship]’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008a: 54) with him or her, is to employ the semiotic resource of hyponyms that belong to the superordinate of ‘family’. In so doing, the social actor is represented as someone with whom the viewers can identify: a ‘fellow human being’ who, ‘like’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 145) any other person in the audience, is a family member and someone’s husband, father, brother, son, grandson or nephew. This way of relating a represented social actor to viewers in terms of social distance (Van Leeuwen, 2008b) is observed to be used by the Democrat principal speakers – and Barack Obama himself – to reduce the social distance between Barack Obama and the viewers, thereby making them not feel ‘distant’ (p. 138) from the presidential candidate. The following excerpts from the principal speakers’ speeches exemplify this finding.

Principal speakers – and Barack Obama himself – relating Barack Obama to the American people as ‘just like us’, as realized by hyponyms (see words in bold type below) that belong to the superordinate, ‘family’:

‘I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.’ – Michelle Obama

‘And [Barack Obama’s] wife, Michelle and his entire loving family, inspiring him every day to strengthen and renew this great country.’ – Nancy Pelosi

‘The extraordinary strength of his personal character – and that of his wonderful wife, Michelle – is grounded in the strengths of the American community.’ – Al Gore

‘Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama’s uncle is here with us tonight. Please join me in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne. Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division.’ – John Kerry

‘It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to your daughters as well.’ – Barack Obama

‘I think about my mom, who raised me on her own while she worked and earned her degree.’ – Barack Obama

‘I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbour, marched in Patton’s Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.’ – Barack Obama

‘And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.’ – Barack Obama

‘That’s the promise of America: the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.’ – Barack Obama

From the analysis of the excerpts above, we can see that there is a consistent discursive effort across principal speakers from the Democratic Party to relate Barack Obama, verbally, to the viewers as just ‘like us’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 145), a family member and someone’s husband, father, brother, son and grandson. To align (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25) with and augment this verbal discursive strategy, it is found that resources from the semiotic mode of visuals were also tapped into.

After Barack Obama finished delivering his acceptance speech, it is observed that he was joined by his wife and two daughters on stage. A series of acts of intimacy between Barack Obama and his family then ensued on stage: he hugged and kissed his wife, held his daughter, Sasha, closely in his arms, and group-hugged his family.⁸ This is curious because the social context, in question, was after all a public space in which 84,000 people were present. In spite of this, Barack Obama still chose to enact these acts of physical intimacy – normally reserved for the private space – before the public’s eyes. This curious phenomenon, I believe, is not innocent but served a discursive end: Barack Obama’s wife and two daughters were – to put it bluntly – employed as semiotic resources to relate Barack Obama, visually, to the American people viewing the event as just ‘like us’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 145), a family member and someone’s husband and father, in order to make them identify and feel a sense of ‘closeness’ (p. 138) with the presidential candidate.

Close to us. In real life, ‘distance communicates interpersonal relations’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 138); for example, we hug or cuddle up to people who are close to us but maintain a physical distance from people whom we don’t know or like. Distance, therefore, indicates the ‘closeness’, be it literal or representational, of our relations with others. In verbal language though, distance becomes representational. This is evident from how distance-related phrases like ‘keep our distance’, ‘close to’ and ‘work closely’ can be employed as semiotic resources to construct either ‘close’ or ‘distant’ relations between a represented social actor and viewers. And it is exactly the former discursive strategy that was used at the convention: principal speakers from the Democratic Party employed distance-related phrases, or to be more precise, proximity-related phrases, to relate Barack Obama to the American people viewing the event as a people’s leader who is ‘close to’ (p. 141) and not far removed from the American people’s lives. The following excerpts show how this discursive strategy was realized.

Principal speakers – and Barack Obama himself – relating Barack Obama to the American people as ‘close to us’, as realized by proximity-related phrases (see words in bold type below):

‘Doubtless, we know that Barack Obama’s journey has never been far from the pain and struggle so many Americans face today.’ – Dick Durbin

‘He’ll achieve these goals the same way he always has – by bringing us together and reminding us how much we share and how alike we really are.’ – Michelle Obama

‘But I stand before you tonight because all across America, something is stirring.’ – Barack Obama

Other than proximity-related phrases from the semiotic mode of verbal language, the resource of visual distance from the semiotic mode of visuals can enact ‘close’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 141) relations between a represented social actor and viewers too.

According to Van Leeuwen (2008b), when a social actor is depicted at a visual distance far away from the viewer where only overall impression comes across, he or she is viewed as a ‘stranger’ and ‘distant’ (p. 138) ‘object for scrutiny’ (p. 141). When a social actor is depicted, on the other hand, at a visual distance close to the viewer where his or her individual characteristics can be perceived clearly by the viewer, the representation and symbolic relation change radically: the represented social actor is viewed as ‘close to us’ (p. 141), not as a ‘stranger’ (p. 138). This discursive strategy can be seen at the multimodal ensemble of the 2008 US DNC, too, where it was used to reduce the social distance between Barack Obama and the American people viewing the event, thereby relating him as ‘close to us’.

Indeed, several projected images of Barack Obama at the convention were never shown in a long shot (see Figure 5 and Notes 9, 10 and 11). This is not surprising because to see someone from a distance would be to see him or her in the way we would normally only see a ‘stranger’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 138) ‘whose life does not touch on ours … [and] in outline, impersonally, as a type rather than as an individual’ (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001: 146) – a discursive outcome that Barack Obama’s campaign advisors, clearly, did not want to see at the convention. It is no wonder, then, that throughout Barack Obama’s 42-minute speech, his projected images were shown and maintained consistently in a close-up shot. In so doing, every detail of Barack Obama’s face and expression was made visible, revealing his individuality and his personality to the viewers at the convention. This, as a result, made the American people at the convention see and relate to Barack Obama in a way they would normally only see a person with whom they are more or less ‘intimately acquainted’ (p. 146) with and ‘close to’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 141).

Figure 5.

One of the big electronic screens from which Barack Obama’s image was projected. Source: Jeffrey Beall, Flickr (Creative Commons, BY-ND 2.0) (available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/2808058731/).

Social relation

In this second part of the analytic discussion, I will go on to discuss how represented social actors can be related to addressees, multimodally, in terms of social relation (Van Leeuwen, 2008b).

According to Van Leeuwen (2008b), when a represented social actor is related to addressees in terms of social relation, the addressees are made to see the represented social actor as though he or she is socially ‘equal’ (p. 139) with, ‘above’ or ‘below’ (p. 138) them. One way a represented social actor can be related, verbally, as having an ‘equal’ relationship with addressees, according to Fairclough (2010), is to use the second person pronoun, ‘you’, to ‘personaliz[e] … the addressees’, thus ‘simulat[ing] a conversational, therefore relatively personal … solidary and equal relationship’ (p. 105, emphasis added) between the represented social actor and addressees. And it is exactly this verbal strategy that is observed to have been employed by Barack Obama throughout his acceptance speech. The following excerpts exemplify this discursive strategy used by Barack Obama at the convention.

Barack Obama ‘simulating a conversational, therefore relatively personal … solidary and equal relationship’ with the addressees, as realized by the second person pronoun, ‘you’ (see words in bold type below):

‘Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story.’

‘We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma.’

‘I love this country, and so do you.’

‘What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.’

‘For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past.’

‘You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result.

You have shown what history teaches us – that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.’

Interestingly, this constructed social relation of symbolic equality (Van Leeuwen, 2008b) between Barack Obama and the American people being spoken to was not extended to his opponent, Republican Party’s presidential nominee, John McCain. In stark contrast, Barack Obama is observed to have related himself as socially ‘above’ (p. 138) John McCain, that is, having more symbolic power than him. This was realized through the employment of three semiotic resources: exclusive imperatives, interrogatives and grammatical subject. The following excerpts from Barack Obama’s acceptance speech exemplify this finding.

Barack Obama relating himself as socially ‘above’ John McCain, as realized by the exclusive imperative (see words in bold type below):

‘[John McCain] said that … we’ve become … a nation of whiners. A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud autoworkers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever …

‘[A nation of whiners?] Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty.’

Barack Obama relating himself as socially ‘above’ John McCain, as realized by interrogatives with John McCain as the subject (see words in bold type below):

‘Why else would he define middle class as someone making under five million dollars a year?’

‘How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans?’

‘How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits?’

From the analysis of the excerpts above, we can see there are two principal ways in which Barack Obama exerted symbolic power over John McCain, thus relating himself socially ‘above’ him (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 138). Firstly, in the way in which John McCain was instructed like a child by Barack Obama to account to the American people why he called them ‘a nation of whiners’. And, secondly, in the way John McCain was ‘put on the spot’ in the series of curt questions posed by Barack Obama. Indeed, this stands in stark contrast to how Barack Obama was related to the American people and is, I argue, a discursive masterstroke: in relating himself as ‘socially equal’ to the American people but as ‘socially above’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 138) John McCain, Barack Obama was signalling to the American people listening to his speech that although he enjoys an ‘equal’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 139) social relation with the people, he can be authoritative and commanding (i.e. socially ‘above’) when it comes to controlling¹² (Van Dijk, 2001) and questioning the incumbent powers that be, represented by Republican nominee, John McCain. To align with (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25) and augment this verbal strategy of relating Barack Obama as ‘socially equal’ with the American people, it is observed that a visual strategy was also used at the convention to construct an ‘equal’ social relation between Barack Obama and the American people viewing the event.

According to Van Leeuwen (2008b), vertical angle, as a resource from the semiotic mode of visuals, can be employed in three different ways to express a crucial aspect of constructed social relation between the represented social actor and viewers: power. First, if a high vertical angle is used to make viewers look down on a represented social actor, it can ‘exert imaginary symbolic power over that person’ (p. 139); in other words, the represented social actor is related as socially ‘below’ (p. 138) the viewers. Second, if a low vertical angle is employed to make viewers look up at a represented social actor, it ‘signifies that the someone has symbolic power over [the viewers]’ (p. 139); in other words, the represented social actor is related as socially ‘above’ (p. 138) the viewers. Finally, if viewers are made to look at a represented social actor at eye-level, it signifies a social relation of symbolic equality; in other words, the represented social actor is related to viewers as socially ‘equal’ (p. 139) with the viewers. And it is exactly this discursive strategy of employing the vertical angle as a semiotic resource to enact such imaginary social relations that is observed to have been applied to the social context of the convention in order to relate Barack Obama not as socially ‘above’ or ‘below’ the American people, but as socially ‘equal with’ them. Figure 5, as featured earlier in the article, exemplifies this finding (see also Notes 5, 9, 10 and 11).

Indeed, from these figures, we can see that the vertical angle of projected images of Barack Obama around the convention was calibrated to make viewers look at them at eye-level, regardless of where they were seated at the stadium. In fact, it is observed that there was not a single moment, throughout Barack Obama’s 42-minute speech, when the vertical angle of the various projected images at the convention shifted to below or above eye-level. This, I believe, is not innocent. In allowing the American people, regardless of where they were seated in the stadium, to see the depicted Barack Obama at eye-level, the American people were made to see the presidential candidate, not as a leader who (1) wields arbitrary power over the people, or (2) is socially below or as low in power to the people, but as a leader who shares an ‘equal’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 139) and democratic social relation with them. This visual strategy, combined with the earlier-discussed verbal strategy, therefore, strategically dissolved any ‘power difference’ (p. 139) between the depicted Barack Obama and viewers, thus enacting the much desired social relation of symbolic equality between the presidential candidate and the American people.

Social interaction

In this final part of the analytic discussion, I shall discuss how represented social actors can be related, multimodally, to addressees in terms of social interaction (Van Leeuwen, 2008b).

According to Van Leeuwen, when a represented social actor is related to addressees in terms of social interaction, the addressees are made to see the represented social actor as though he or she is ‘in interaction with us’ (p. 137), whatever the actual relation that exists between them and the viewer. One way to realize this discursive strategy, verbally, is to employ the linguistic resource of address forms (i.e. ‘word or words used to address somebody in speech or writing’, see Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 11) continually to ‘maintain social contact’ (Roos, 1989: 229) with addressees during a given communicative activity. And one address form that is observed to have been employed by Barack Obama – throughout his acceptance speech – to enact this ‘symbolic’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 141) interactive relation (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996), continually, with the American people viewing the event was that of the vocative.

A vocative is an element identifying the entity – usually a person or persons – to whom we are speaking or writing. It is an optional element, not part of clause structure … If we use a vocative, it usually goes at the beginning or end of a clause. (Crystal, 2004: 104, emphasis added)

And from a Hallidayan (1985) perspective, ‘vocatives are … interpersonal in function’, as cited in Leong (nd: para 7, emphasis added): they can be employed to ‘define, maintain or reinforce a social relationship’ (Crystal, 2004: 105) and play a part in ‘creating interactions between … speakers and listeners’ (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001: 140). In the case of Barack Obama, it is observed that he employed the vocative, ‘America’, to address and ‘maintain social contact’ (Roos, 1989: 229) with the American people listening to his acceptance speech, thus enacting an interactive relation with the American people. The following excerpts from his speech exemplify this discursive strategy used by Barack Obama.

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people by his addressing them, as realized by the vocative, ‘America’ (see words in bold type below):

‘America, we are better than these last eight years.’

‘America, now is not the time for small plans.’

‘America, our work will not be easy.’

‘America, this is one of those moments.’

‘America, we cannot turn back’ (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Combined analysis of Barack Obama’s speech and gestures. Source: Barack Obama Accepts the 2008 Democratic Nomination, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). http://watch.thirteen.org/video/2276378804/.

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people by addressing them, as realised by a deictic gesture (see circled gesture below) that co-occurred with a vocative (see word in bold type below):
Example 1
Gesture
Speech	‘America, we cannot turn back.’

Other than the vocative, Barack Obama – throughout his 42-minute speech – also employed the address term of the personal pronoun to ‘maintain social contact’ (Roos, 1989: 229) and ‘interact with’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 137) the American people listening to his speech. Two such personal pronouns that were employed to construct this relation were the inclusive first person (‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’) and the second person (‘you’ and ‘your’). Thus, in what was actually a one-way form of communication, these address terms made it possible for Barack Obama to ‘interact with’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 137) the audience continually. This is realized through Barack Obama’s employment of: (1) the inclusive first person (‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’) that addressed the audience by including them in reference, as well, during his speech; and (2) the second person (‘you’ and ‘your’) that allowed Barack Obama to ‘address audience members directly’ (Fairclough, 1989: 205). The following excerpts exemplify this discursive strategy.

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people, as realized by the inclusive first person, ‘we’, which addressed the audience (the American people) by including them in reference, as well, during his speech:

1. ‘And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say eight is enough’ (see Table 2, Example 1).

2. ‘So I’ve got news for you, John McCain: we all put our country first’ (see Table 2, Example 2).

3. ‘We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.’

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people, as realized by the inclusive first person, ‘us’, which addressed the audience (the American people) by including them in reference, as well, during his speech:

4. ‘Well, it’s time for them to own their failure. It’s time for us to change America.’

5. ‘It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.’

6. ‘Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.’

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people, as realized by the inclusive first person, ‘our’, which addressed the audience (the American people) by including them in reference, as well, during his speech:

7. ‘We meet at one of those defining moments – a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil and the American promise has been threatened once more.’

8. ‘Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy’ (see Table 2, Example 3).

9. ‘What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose – our sense of higher purpose. And that’s what we have to restore.’

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people, as realized by the second person, ‘you’, which ‘addressed audience members directly’ during his speech:

10. ‘I love this country, and so do you’ (see Table 3, Example 1).

11. ‘But I stand before you tonight because all across America, something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you’ (see Table 3, Examples 2 and 3)

12. ‘For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us—that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.’

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people, as realized by the second person, ‘your’, which ‘addressed audience members directly’ during his speech:

13. ‘The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives—on health care and education and the economy—Senator McCain has been anything but independent’ (see Table 3, Example 4).

14. ‘How else could [John McCain] offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?’

15. ‘Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses.’

Table 2.

Combined analysis of Barack Obama’s speech and gestures. Source: Barack Obama Accepts the 2008 Democratic Nomination, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). http://watch.thirteen.org/video/2276378804/.

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people by addressing them, as realised by a deictic gesture (see circled gesture below) that co-occurred with the inclusive first person pronoun (see words in bold type below):
Example 1
Gesture
Speech	‘On November 4^th, we must stand up and say eight is enough.’
Example 2
Gesture
Speech	‘So I’ve got news for you John McCain: we all put our country first.’
Example 3
Gesture
Speech	‘Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.’

Table 3.

Combined analysis of Barack Obama’s speech and gestures. Source: Barack Obama Accepts the 2008 Democratic Nomination, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). http://watch.thirteen.org/video/2276378804/.

Barack Obama enacting an interactive relation with the American people by addressing them, as realised by a deictic gesture (see circled gesture below) that co-occurred with the second person pronoun (see words in bold type below):
Example 1
Gesture
Speech	‘I love this country, and so do you.’
Example 2
Gesture
Speech	‘But I stand before you tonight because all across America, something is stirring.’
Example 3
Gesture
Speech	‘What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.’
Example 4
Gesture
Speech	‘The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives—on health care and education and the economy—Senator McCain has been anything but independent.’

From the analysis of the excerpts above, we can see clearly how the semiotic resource of personal pronouns – specifically the inclusive first person and the second person – were employed by Barack Obama to continually address and ‘maintain social contact’ (Roos, 1989: 229) with the American people in his speech, thereby relating himself, in the process, as ‘interact[ing] with us’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 137).¹³ Interestingly, this constructed interactive relation did not stop on the verbal front: to align (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25) with and augment this verbal discursive strategy, it is observed that Barack Obama also employed resources from the semiotic mode of kinesics to ‘maintain social contact’ and ‘interact’ with the American people listening to his speech. These nonverbal resources co-occurred with Barack Obama’s speech and worked in concert with their verbal counterparts (the earlier-discussed vocatives and personal pronouns) to relate him, multimodally, as ‘interact[ing] with us’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 137). The following analytic discussion explicates how this symbiotic discursive strategy was realized at the convention.

In nonverbal communication studies, all body movement is subsumed under the semiotic mode of kinesics, which comprises a myriad of resources like gestures, non-gestural movements of the extremities, walking, body posture, stillness, head and trunk movements and facial expressions including the direction of the gaze (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2009). Employing these kinesic resources in a social context can result in ‘momentary enactments’ (p. 254) of not only discourses, but also ‘imaginary relation[s]’ (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001: 145) between the speaker and addressees. One such kinesic resource that Barack Obama employed in his speech to enact an interactive relation with the American people being spoken to was deictic gestures.

Deictic or pointing gestures are gestures that ‘populate the space in between the speaker and [addressee]’ (Cassell, 1998: 196) and refer to ‘persons, objects, directions, or locations, or may “point to” non-existent or imaginary referents’ (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2009: 254). In a sense, they can be considered as the kinesic versions of linguistic resources such as deixis and address forms. Deictic gestures may also occur with or without speech and are ‘usually associated with, but are certainly not limited to, the use of the extended index finger with the rest of the fingers closed’ – indeed, ‘one can also use the whole hand to represent entities or ideas or events in space’ (Cassell, 1998: 196).

With reference to these features of deictic gestures then, it is observed that Barack Obama employed a myriad of deictic gestures – throughout his speech – that ‘refer[red]’ and ‘point[ed] to’ (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2009: 254) the American people (see gestures that are circled in yellow in Tables 1, 2 and Table 3). Not only that, but each deictic gesture that was employed by him was synchronized in time so that it occurred either with or just before its ‘parallel linguistic unit’ (Cassell, 1998: 192), the vocative, inclusive first person or second person. In so doing, each pair of kinesic and linguistic resources worked in seamless intermodal alignment (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25) to allow Barack Obama to ‘maintain social contact’ (Roos, 1989: 229), multimodally, with the American people listening to his speech. This, in the process, related him as a leader who was not unengaged, but ‘in interaction’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 137) with the American people. The combined analyses of Barack Obama’s speech and co-occurring gestures, conducted in Tables 1, 2 and 3, show how this symbiotic discursive strategy was realized multimodally.

Doubtless, the analysis conducted in Tables 1, 2 and 3 reveals how deliberate Barack Obama was in employing deictic gestures (which ‘referred’ and ‘pointed’ to the American people) that co-occurred either with or just before their ‘parallel linguistic unit’ (Cassell, 1998: 192) in order to enact an interactive relation (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996) between himself and the American people being spoken to. Deictic gestures, however, were not the only kinesic resource he employed during his speech to realize this discursive strategy; there was also the kinesic resource of the direction of gaze.

According to Van Leeuwen (2008b), an interactive relation between viewers and a represented social actor can be enacted by the semiotic resource of the direction of gaze too: if a social actor is depicted to not look directly viewers, he or she is represented as an unengaged and impersonal ‘object for scrutiny’ (p. 141). On the other hand, when the social actor is depicted to look directly at the viewer, he or she and the viewers are immediately ‘engaged’ (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001: 136) in an interactive relation because the represented social actor’s direction of gaze addresses the viewer directly and ‘articulates … a semiotic demand’ (p. 140) to ‘engage’ (p. 136) and ‘interact with’ (p. 137) viewers.

This discursive strategy of employing direction of gaze as a semiotic resource to enact an interactive relation between the represented social actor and viewers is observed at the 2008 US DNC too: throughout Barack Obama’s speech, not once did he disconnect his gaze from the American people present at the convention by looking up at the sky or down at the ground. Instead, he adhered painstakingly to the act of making eye contact with every section of the audience in his line of sight by oscillating his direction of gaze continuously from left to right and back to left – like a pendulum –throughout his 42-minute speech. The still frames in Table 4 below depict this curious case of kinesic phenomenon.

Table 4.

Frame-by-frame analysis of Barack Obama’s direction of gaze during his acceptance speech.Source: Barack Obama Accepts the 2008 Democratic Nomination, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). http://watch.thirteen.org/video/2276378804/.


Right direction of gaze	Centre direction of gaze	Left direction of gaze

Centre direction of gaze	Right direction of gaze	Centre direction of gaze

Indeed, if one were to think about it, it takes a conscious and highly disciplined effort to perform the above-depicted kinesic act, continuously, throughout a speech that lasted for 42 minutes. For this reason, I believe it to be calculated: by making eye contact continually with the audience (1) in front of him, (2) on his left and (3) on his right, I argue, Barack Obama was actually employing the kinesic resource of direction of gaze to make the American people not see him as a detached and impersonal ‘object for scrutiny’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008b: 141), but an involved and personal leader whom they have an interactive relation with.

Conclusion

Drawing on the respective theoretical assumptions on the different kinds of ‘symbolic’ relations that can be constructed between represented social actors and viewers (Van Leeuwen, 2008b) and the different ways resources from different semiotic modes can ‘interact’ with one another within a multimodal ensemble (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25), this article discovered that particular resources from the semiotic modes of verbal language, visuals and kinesics can be employed strategically to ‘cooperate’ (Jewitt, 2009b: 15) and align (Lemke, 1998, as cited in Jewitt, 2009b: 25) with one other to relate a represented social actor and addressees in terms of social distance (i.e. just like us and close to us), social relation (i.e. socially equal with us) and social interaction (i.e. interacting with us) in a given political context. This discovered composite strategy, which can be applied to political contexts, has the overall discursive effect of making addressees see a represented social actor as having a ‘personal and equal relationship’ (Fairclough, 1989: 222) with them. Fairclough would call this discovered composite strategy synthetic personalization: a discourse producer’s ‘compensatory tendency to give the impression [to] each of the audience “handled” en masse’ (p. 62) that they have an ‘intima[te]’, ‘friend[ly]’ (p. 218), ‘equal’, ‘personal’ (p. 222) or ‘solid’ (p. 195) relationship with the social actor being represented. Indeed, in the context of the 2008 US DNC, synthetic personalization had been employed by discourse producers to strategically ‘simulate’ (Fairclough, 2010: 105) relations of ‘fellowship’ and ‘intimacy’ (i.e. social distance), ‘equality’ (i.e. social relation) and ‘engagement’ (i.e. social interaction) between Barack Obama and the American people, all for the instrumental purpose of serving the Democratic Party’s political interest: ensuring their party’s presidential nominee, Barack Obama, gets voted by the American people and wins the election. As the use of synthetic personalization in public contexts such as the above becomes more commonplace; as we become surrounded increasingly by synthetic ‘intimacy’, ‘fellowship’, ‘equality’ and ‘engagement’, I fear the worst: that one day, our ability to confidently recognize genuine relational practices will be invariably affected. That one day, the most genuine of relational practices will in turn be met with ‘synthetic interpretations’ (Fairclough, 1989: 218).

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Biographical Note

WEE BOON WONG is an International Baccalaureate® (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) Coordinator and IBDP English Teacher at Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) Jakarta, an IB World School. Formerly a PhD Research Scholar at the National University of Singapore, he was a recipient of two graduate student teaching awards conferred by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and completed his doctoral studies under the guidance of Associate Professor Michelle M Lazar. Possessing a passion for raising people’s awareness of the discursive strategies that can be involved in the construction of multimodal discourses, his research interests include multimodal communication and representation, social semiotics and critical discourse analysis.

Address: Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) Jakarta, Jalan Bantar Jati, Kelurahan Setu, Jakarta Timur 13880, Indonesia. [email: wbwong.sage@gmail.com]

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