The Stylistic Effects of Human Rights Rhetoric: An Analysis of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2011 LGBT Human Rights Speech

Abstract

Contemporary emphasis in the rhetorical community currently privileges invention and delivery as modes of analysis for public arguments, as they are the primary areas of the rhetorical canon involved in tracking meaning shifts between these public arguments and the policy initiatives they influence. As a result, stylistic analysis is largely ignored as a critical approach when the purpose of investigation into public arguments is to apprehend policy changes. Through the implementation of a rhetorical stylistic analysis of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2011 LGBT human rights speech, this paper seeks to call attention to style’s influence on policy by locating the stylistic choices of public arguments as frameworks for subsequent policy changes.