Echoes from Abroad — Speeches for the Domestic Audience: Queen Beatrix’ Address to the Israeli Parliament

The paper discusses the development of rhetorical analyses of political addresses from classical antiquity to modern political communication. A specific genre, the ‘epideictic address’, is described in detail. It concerns addresses by representative persons. Most epideictic addresses turn out to be ‘hybrid’ texts because they combine an orientation towards (rhetorical-political) persuasion with an impetus to new ‘expressions’ which henceforward may be used in order to link socio-cultural practices with personal-political experiences. Therefore, the analytical framework has to be completed by a (critical) discourse analytical approach. Both approaches, the rhetorical and the discourse analytical, are applied to an analysis of (parts of) Dutch Queen Beatrix’ speech to the Israeli Parliament. The ‘hybrid’ character of her speech is discussed in detail as far as perspectivisation devices are concerned. Finally, attention is drawn to the philo-Semitic ‘texture’ of the Knesset address.