词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Americanrhetoric.com

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: June 17, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a Web site that offers an interesting look at United States life and history, through examples of how Americans use rhetoric¹, the language of persuasion².

RS: Michael Eidenmuller is an assistant professor of rhetoric and public address at the University of Texas at Tyler. He says an average of five-thousand Internet users a day visit his site, americanrhetoric.com.

AA: What he calls the "heart" of the site is a huge database of political and religious speeches from the last two centuries. These come in text form. Many also have audio and in some cases video.

RS: And there's lots more at americanrhetoric.com, which Professor Eidenmuller originally created for his students.

EIDENMULLER: "You'll find quizzes, various exercises in rhetoric to kind of get the student acquainted with how we, in America anyway, conceptualize the discipline of rhetoric. And, gosh, you'll find an area dedicated³ to 9-11 [the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001], beginning with the radio reports of police units observing what it is they're seeing as in the Pentagon situation, for example, when the plane crashed into the Pentagon.

POLICE OFFICER: " ... it was an American Airlines plane headed eastbound over the pike, possibly toward the Pentagon."

DISPATCHER: "Ten-four. Cruiser 50 direct?"

OFFICER: "Fifty, 10-4."

SECOND OFFICER: "Thirty-six, I'm en route. I see the smoke."

AA: We asked Michael Eidenmuller what are some of the most popular speeches on his site.

EIDENMULLER: "By far the single most popular speech, as measured by the number of hits it gets per day, is Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' [delivered at a big demonstration⁴ at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.]"

MARTIN LUTHER KING: " ... freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"

AA: "Now we've just recently lost a man who was known as the Great Communicator, President Ronald Reagan."

EIDENMULLER: "Right."

AA: "Has there been an influx⁵ of people to your site, downloading his speeches?

EIDENMULLER: "Yes, the site activity has over the last week and a half has approximately doubled, and the vast majority of the increased can be accounted for by people accessing Reagan's great speeches."

RONALD REAGAN (January 28, 1986): "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss."

RS: "What is there in the style of Ronald Reagan, what does his rhetoric style tell us about the life and times?"

EIDENMULLER: "Much has been made about the tone of Ronald Reagan's delivery. He tended to convey rather sophisticated policy ideas in a neighborly way, quote unquote. But I think that he took presidential rhetoric in terms of style in a slightly different direction. He really greatly preferred telling stories that would capture both the emotional tone as well as some of the substance of the ideas that he was trying to communicate. And this was a kind of populist rhetoric that really hadn't caught on at least to the extent that it did under Reagan's direction."

RS: "What can students of English as a foreign language learn from this Web site, learn from listening to great speeches?"

EIDENMULLER: "Several things. I think that American rhetoric for foreign, students foreign to English as a first language anyway, it's useful for closing the gap, I think, between the formal study of American English grammar and syntax and perhaps the idiomatic⁶ expression of American language.

And by the way, a significant minority of American Rhetoric audiences, two things, emanate⁷ from outside the United States. The greatest single percentage of these come from Communist China, interestingly enough. So it's useful for closing the gap between what you study formally and then how things actually play out rhetorically. I think it serves students, it teaches them to appreciate the role of public rhetoric in American-style democracy certainly.

"There is an argument that says America, like Rome, is largely an idea. And if one accepts that argument at some level, it's an easy move from there to say that ideas are always and only expressed persuasively⁸ through rhetoric. And so an appreciation⁹ and understanding of the great rhetoric that has been produced in this country would help the student to understand the history of the ideas, really the way this country is made as an idea."

AA: And you can find thousands of examples of everything from speeches to movie clips at americanrhetoric.com. It's creator is Michael Eidenmuller, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, who says he regularly gets visitors from some 200 countries.

RS: We've posted a link at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster, where you can also find archives of our segments. And our e-mail address is。。。。。。With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

 

1 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

2 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

3 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

4 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

5 influx   

n.流入，注入

参考例句：

• The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.这个国家实在不能接纳这么多涌入的难民。
• Textile workers favoured protection because they feared an influx of cheap cloth.纺织工人拥护贸易保护措施，因为他们担心涌入廉价纺织品。

6 idiomatic   

adj.成语的，符合语言习惯的

参考例句：

• In our reading we should always be alert for idiomatic expressions.我们在阅读过程中应经常注意惯用法。
• In his lecture,he bore down on the importance of idiomatic usage in a language.他在演讲中着重强调了语言中习惯用法的重要性。

7 emanate   

v.发自，来自，出自

参考例句：

• Waves emanate from the same atom source.波是由同一原子辐射的。
• These chemicals can emanate certain poisonous gases.这些化学药品会散发出某些有毒的气味。

8 persuasively   

adv.口才好地；令人信服地

参考例句：

• Students find that all historians argue reasonably and persuasively. 学生们发现所有的历史学家都争论得有条有理，并且很有说服力。 来自辞典例句
• He spoke a very persuasively but I smelled a rat and refused his offer. 他说得头头是道，但我觉得有些可疑，于是拒绝了他的建议。 来自辞典例句

9 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。