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chapter 1
- Texas A&M University Press
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chap te r 1 The Problem of the Challenger Address The Challenger address is a peculiar speech. Ask most of those who remember it—which is nearly everyone who heard it on the evening of January 28, 1986—and they will tell you,“it’s a great speech” or “it’s an eloquent speech” or even “it’s the best speech Ronald Reagan ever gave.”1 Then ask them if they remember anything about the text of the talk, and they will grow a bit uncertain and sometimes a bit puzzled. Even those who answer confidently often respond the same way: “Oh yeah, that’s the one about touching the face of God.” The speech is widely remembered as eloquent, and yet its most memorable line is a quotation. It is peculiar in other ways as well. While it has certain laudatory qualities and is sometimes thought of as a eulogy, it doesn’t quite fit that definition.2 Reagan’s tribute to the Challenger crew was given on January 31, 1986 (see appendix). More broadly understood, it could be considered an epideictic address or even an encomium since it has elements that place it in both of those categories. Nevertheless, the Challenger address,while clearly epideictic,is not really an encomium.3 In fact, it isn’t even all that eloquent, if by“eloquent”we mean Cicero’s “wisdom expressed with fluency,” for there is little in the speech that could be counted as wisdom; thus only part of it even approaches [14] chapter 1 eloquence. Although elements of the talk clearly echo Lincoln at Gettysburg , if that is our standard, the Challenger address does not meet the definition of eloquence, even if one relies upon a reduced, visually appealing expressiveness confined to an electronic age.4 The Challenger speech was given in response to at least two immediate needs: the expectation that the president would speak and the belief that, in speaking, he would address the nation’s shock and grief, both of which had been exacerbated by the video footage of the explosion that had replayed on televisions across the country throughout the day. In comforting the nation as a whole, Reagan also spoke about NASA and the space program in general, perhaps hoping to minimize any potential negative political repercussions the explosion might bring about. These elements—the epideictic task of giving solace and the deliberative task of protecting NASA—do not always fit comfortably together, and the Challenger address is neither the smoothest nor the most internally cohesive of speeches. But in the immediate context, it successfully negotiated the tensions caused by the mixture of epideictic and deliberative appeals and resolved them through an adept use of the frontier metaphor.5 The Challenger address is thus one of the more remembered speeches of the Reagan presidency, and people often recall it as moving .6 Because the address is so puzzling, it is also a productive site for analysis, and because it does not fit neatly into a genre, understanding it can also help us comprehend genres of discourse.7 In view of the fact that it accomplishes both deliberative and epideictic ends, grasping its meaning can help us understand those categories as well. And because this speech is considered powerful by so many, it can help us understand what eloquence means for the contemporary presidency. The rest of this chapter assists in this effort by placing the Challenger remarks within these various intellectual traditions and demonstrates how a speech that does not quite fit into any of them can shed light on all of them. [54.167.52.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:30 GMT) [15] the problem of the challenger address Epideictic Address and the Eulogistic Tradition Eulogies have probably been with us as long as humans have been honoring their dead,and,as with all elements of funeral and memorial ceremonies,certain rhetorical traditions have evolved along with those ceremonies.In the case of Western civilization,Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson tell us that a eulogy responds to a situation in which a community is disrupted by a death. In this situation, persons must alter their relationship with the deceased and also confront their own mortality. The very act of eulogizing acknowledges the death. In so doing, it necessitates a juxtaposition of past and present tense which recasts the relationship to the deceased to one of memory. The assurance that the deceased, hence the audience...