A multimodal analysis of personal recalls in Barak Obama’s political speech: an over-personalization or a social resource to enhance reconciliation processes?

Our study explores a specific facet of the more general issue of how Barak Obama uses autobiographical references to enhance reconciliation processes (Hammack, 2010). We reviewed Obama’s fifteen relevant political speeches, addressing both national and international audiences, delivered either before or after assuming his role as US President. This first analysis allowed us to highlight how he constantly used autobiographical memories as a key rhetorical strategy during his political speech –based on some of the finest rhetorical competences shown by today political leaders. We decided therefore to observe, through in-depth multimodal grids (Poggi, 2007), both the verbal and the body communication he used when recalling autobiographical memories referred to intergroup violence. This second set of analyses allowed us to detect Obama’s different uses of communication signals and signs, showing a fine choice of words apt to describe frankly but without any aggressive nuance the long-term effects of structural or direct violence on his life and on the life of his family, exposed to a number of negative historical events (colonial domination, WW2, social and economic difficulties linked to the unconventional conditions characterizing his multicultural origin).