New Year's Speeches, Part 3

Shinzo Abe, Dept. of State Photo

1. Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, gave a New Year's speech in which he continued his advocacy of stimulative fiscal and monetary economic policies. His policies are called Abenomics and, in fact, he used that very term himself. Prior to the adoption of Abenomics, Japan's economy had been in the doldrums for some number of years. Now, although we often think about a ceremonial speech, such as a New Year's speech, as an opportunity for praise and blame, for discussing broad values, and so forth, this year sees a trend in which international public officials are giving Fourth of July July speeches about economic and political policies. This actually makes a lot of sense, because the new year is a symbolic time of hope and new plans.

At the same time, Abe's speech did include some traditional epideictic material. He commemorated 70 years of Japan's democratic, post-World War II Constitution. He talked about the declining birthrate in Japan, and examined his plans for the future.

2. President-Elect Donald Trump gave a New Year's speech at a private party for his guests and business partners. He got some news attention for praising a business partner from Dubai. I have not been able to find a complete text or video of the speech, although cell phone video of some selections has leaked onto the Web. Although it is reported that Trump did discuss public issues related to the election, he also spoke about private business matters. Without a complete text I don't see how I can make a reasonable judgment about the speech. Trump's speech does seem to be part of a continuing trend, of which I personally do not approve, in which public officials are giving major speeches in private, without releasing the speech texts or videos. It may be recalled that Hillary Clinton was accused of the same thing.

In general, rhetorical critics and speech historians have not paid much attention to New Year's speeches. The few examples that I've been looking at over the last several days show that the New Year's speech is an interesting genre in many cultures, although, Trump's somewhat unusual contribution aside, it does not seem to be a widely used type of speech in the United States of America.


My earlier posts about New Year's speeches are here and here.