If you've been following the debate about scripted versus unscripted speeches (HERE), Putin's victory speech gives us a chance to review two comparable examples.
Those of us who don't speak Russian, of course, have to make allowances for any loss of impact arising from our having to rely on the simultaneous translation.
According to those who believe that speeches read from a written script sound (and/or look) 'less authentic' than those that don't, Putin is presumably the clear winner over Obama when it comes to delivering an effective presidential victory speech.
But that, predictably, is the exact opposite of the impression I got from these two specimens.
I also know that I don't feel in the least bit motivated to do a line-by-line analysis of Putin's speech along the lines of the one I did of Obama's back in 2008 (HERE).
Nor am I at all surprised that no national newspaper (or any other media outlet) has approached me for a technical comment on Putin's speech - and would be more than a little surprised if any of them bothered to do so.
P.S. Why hasn't the media published a text of Putin's speech?
Having spent quite a while on Google looking for things like "text of Putin's victory speech", I was surprised to discover that - unusually for what one would have thought was an important enough speech to merit full translation - none of our major media outlets has bothered to publish a verbatim copy of the text.
Needless to say, I think this is a great pity, as some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to make our own assessments of politicians by hearing the actual words that come out of their own mouths, rather than having to depend on media-selected quotations or commentaries.
And, in this particular case, the few remarks that were translated did seem to be interesting and important enough to deserve full translation.
1 comment:
Surely Putin would have written his speech 4 years ago?
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