The Power of Free Speech without Adequate Tools – Political Rhetoric in Croatia

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on the power of rhetoric in a political discourse analyzing the rhetorical skills of a contemporary Croatian politicians. Croatia as a post-communist country paid very little attention to rhetorical education, and as a consequence people who enter political arena are not competent public speakers and often showed a lack of persuasive power. This essay analyses part of the rhetorical ability of a politicians including strategies for building ethos and argumentation skills. Based on a real-life examples, it can be concluded that both politicians as well their audience (i.e. voters) need to be better rhetorically educated which will help in resolving disputes and using persuasion for the benefits of the whole society.

KEYWORDS:

• Argumentation
• ethos
• persuasion
• political discourse
• rhetoric

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, this, and all other translations from Croatian to English, are provided by the author.