On the language of the Clinton-Dole presidential campaign debates General tendencies and successful strategies

This article investigates the rhetorical strategies deployed by President Clinton and Senator Dole during the 1996 presidential debates. Clinton resorted to implicit persuasion and audience-oriented rhetorical strategies, while Dole's persuasion was more explicit, and he did not avoid the use of "dispreferred" strategies such as opening his answers with the discourse particle well. There were differences in the candidates' use of personal pronouns: Dole used I, you, and they more, whereas Clinton employed the audience-inclusive we heavily. Clinton's syntax and the content of his turns were coherently organized; Dole's syntax showed occasional incoherence. The article does not claim that the use of successful rhetorical strategies is a necessary requirement for electoral success; it does, however, claim that a good orator is more likely to succeed.