Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says

Long ago, I heard one of the founders of conversation analysis (and I can’t remember whether it was Emanuel Schegloff or Gail Jefferson) talking about ‘pre-delicate hitches’ – a rather cumbersome piece of jargon for referring to a fairly common occurrence in conversation.

‘Hitches’ are things like ‘uh-’ and ‘um-, restarts of a word, or slight pauses, and the observation was that these are regularly found at those points in a conversation where the speaker is leading towards a word or a topic that they know is rather ‘delicate’ (e.g. a swear word, obscenity or potentially controversial news, gossip, etc.).

The general argument was that such ‘hitches’ are used to give advance notice that we’re about to say something that we know is rather ‘delicate’ – and know that others might find ‘delicate’ too.

I was therefore fascinated to notice that there were at least ten ‘pre-delicate hitches’ in the first four sentences of Gordon Brown’s comments about the scandal of the Home Secretary’s expenses claim for a blue movie watched by her husband – which you can check out by following the transcript below (hitches in bold) while watching the video HERE.

(P.S. Since posting this, I've realised that you can't actually read the transcript at the same time as watching the video, so keen anoraks will have to copy it on to another file and/or print it out).

BROWN:

"This is- this is very much a-a personal matter (pause) uh- for- for Jacqui.
"She’s made her uh- apology.
"Her husband has made it uh- clear that he is- he is apologised `(sic).
"Uh I-I think that the best thing is that Jacqui Smith gets- gets on with her work as- which is what she wants to do."

What these hitches suggest is that Mr Brown is finding the whole episode much more delicate than he’s letting on in the words that he actually uses.

(If you found this of any interest, you might also like to inspect my explanation of his claim to 'have saved the world' gaffe in December).

‘The Lost Art of Oratory’ by a BBC executive who helped to lose it in the first place

Well, well, well – after decades of showing fewer and fewer speeches (and shorter and shorther extracts from the few that ever do get shown) on television, the BBC is now trailing a programme entitled ‘Yes We Can: The Lost Art of Oratory’ next Sunday night, presented by none other than Alan Yentob – who, in his former roles as controller of BBC 1 and Director of Programmes, was one of the few people who could actually have done something to prevent the ‘Art of Oratory’ from being more or less lost from our television screens in the first place

Having posted a piece entitled ‘Obama's rhetoric renews UK media interest in the 'lost art' of oratory’ back in December, I suppose I should be gratified to see my point being endorsed by the BBC.

But it does seem rather ironic that the programme is being put out on the same channel (BBC 2) that broadcast a half an hour programme of speeches every night during the 1979 election, but where you’ll never see any now – unless they feel it’s time for a bit of speculation about the declining importance of oratory in British politics, helped along the way by authoritative experts like Bob Geldof and Germaine Greer.

Or maybe it’s just their way of trying to justify part of the huge amount of licence payers’ money spent on sending Mr Yentob and the swarms of other BBC employees to Washingon for inauguration day.

Having just heard him plugging the programme on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, I’m not expecting much in the way of news or insight into the subject. But it should be worth recording in case they play any clips that I don't already have in my collection.

(See also Did the media ignore Hannan because they think speeches are 'bad television'? and Mediated speeches - whom do we really want to hear?)

Another Tory speech that marked the beginning of the end for a prime minister

There was an interesting comment the other day on one of my postings about Daniel Hannan's speech by Charles Crawford, a former speechwriter to Sir Geoffrey Howe. It reminded me of another Tory speech that marked the beginning of the end of a prime minister -- and also met the right chord/right audience/right place/right time test for 'memorability'.

His resignation speech to the House of Commons included a fine example of sporting imagery (a cricketing simile) to describe what it had been like working for Mrs Thatcher (see video below).

"It's rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."

The speech ended with a fairly explicit invitation to other discontented colleagues to stand against her for the leadership, and it wasn’t long before she was gone:

"The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long."

Mr Crawford says he didn't write the speech, but I wonder if he or anyone else could shed any light on a rumour that was circulating at the time, namely that Sir Geoffrey's wife had had a major hand in writing it.