Reply #27: Hillary's speech is pretty good...here's why Obama's sounds better

[alcibiades_mystery]

In the black oratorical/sermonic tradition, the speaker establishes a rhythm with the crowd. This is clear in Obama's speech patterns. The thing that ruins most political speeches is the crowd interruption for applause. Most speakers don't know how to manage it, and it completely ruins the rhythm of the speech. In Hillary's case tonight, she had a couple of nice clauses that used anaphora (beginning consecutive clauses with the same word or phrase). The crowd applauded after every clause, completely destroying the rhythmic effect of the anaphora. That doesn't happen with Obama, or with other good African American speakers, because they are much more used to managing crowd response as a result of the call and response tradition. They maintain rhythmic qualities of the speech much more effectively because they know when to let a crowd interrupt with applause and when to plow through.

(And no, I'm not saying "black folks have more rhythm" as some kind of NATURAL fact. I'm saying the social and historical organization of African American oratory pays more attention to the way speakers and audience interact to create rhythm in speeches. It's a very difficult task to manage, and - in my view - accounts for some of the amazed white reaction to black oratory, since white cultures - with the exception of some white Southern sermonic traditions - simply don't have the same sorts of structures.)