Abstract

The article aims at highlighting the contribution of cinematic public speeches – speeches given by characters in movies – to the study of political oratory. In particular, dealing with the results of cognitive research, we argue that the analyses produced within this field about the emotional dimension of rhetoric, can be taken a step forward drawing on the indications of screenwriting theory. Cinematic oratory shows that four main motivating strategies are recurrent. Each one of them assigns to the orator a different narrative role, in order to develop a specific emotional arc. We locate the four strategies on a unifying narrative frame which makes evident the differences and connections between them. A confirmation to the validity of our model will be found in George Lakoff’s and Marshall Ganz’s political communication analyses.