“What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech

Mara Logaldo

doi:10.1515/pol-2015-0021

Article

“What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech

Mara Logaldo
Mara Logaldo (PhD, English Studies) is tenured Research Fellow in English language and translation at IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan, where she teaches courses of British culture and English for Media Studies. Her research interests have mainly focused on rhetoric, media discourse and urban slang (“Only the immigrants can speak the Queen’s English these days’ but all kids have a Jamaican accent: overcompensation vs. urban slang in multiethnic London”, in From International to Local English - And Back Again, eds. Roberta Facchinetti, David Crystal, Barbara Seidlhofler (Bern: Peter Lang): 115–144). She has published monographs on Henry James (Figura e rappresentazione in Henry James: 1896–1901 (Alessandria: Edizioni Dell’Orso, 2000)), on discourse analysis (Writing for the Media (Milano: Arcipelago, 2003)), on the New Journalism (Cronaca come romanzo: Truman Capote e il New Journalism (Milano: Arcipelago, 2003)) and, more recently, on communication in the age of Augmented Reality (Augmented Linguistics (Milano: Arcipelago, 2012)). She has also written extensively on language and the law in British, American and Italian authors. Among her latest publications, “On Crimes, Punishments, and Words. Legal and Language Issues in Cesare Beccaria’s Works,” in Literature and Human Rights. The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse, ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2015): 289–308. She has been a member of AIDEL since 2008.

Published/Copyright: August 27, 2015

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From the journal Pólemos Volume 9 Issue 2

Abstract

The core subject of The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010) is the relation between voice and power. In the first place, we have the speech impediment of the Duke of York (the future George VI) and his subsequent inability to deliver effectual messages to the nation in a particularly dramatic phase in history. This failure highlights, by contrast, the identification of monarchy with voice. The film actually shows how the performative power of speech became crucial after the invention of the wireless. The BBC, as George V stated on his death bed, had turned kings into actors: elocution could either make or unmake them. Yet, these are only some facets of the complex dynamics by which language and power are interrelated in the film. Another important issue is the form of verbal exchange between doctor and patient, which enacts a wavering between two kinds of authority, the one possessed by right (legitimate power) and the one acquired by study and experience (expert power). Emphasis is also placed on standard English as the language traditionally associated with higher education, political supremacy and prestige. The importance given to Received Pronunciation and the contempt shown towards other language variants proves how deeply embedded in language power is. Though amiably, even the ironic remarks on conversational rules made by Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, finally confirm the status quo, putting things and people back into place on the social scale. This is also, ultimately, the policy of the BBC, the institution that has been invested with the task of preserving, at the same time, British national identity and the purity of the English language.

Keywords: language; voice; power; speech acts; monarchy; broadcasting media; received pronunciation; Australian English; American English; conversational rules

About the author

Mara Logaldo

Mara Logaldo (PhD, English Studies) is tenured Research Fellow in English language and translation at IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan, where she teaches courses of British culture and English for Media Studies. Her research interests have mainly focused on rhetoric, media discourse and urban slang (“Only the immigrants can speak the Queen’s English these days’ but all kids have a Jamaican accent: overcompensation vs. urban slang in multiethnic London”, in From International to Local English - And Back Again, eds. Roberta Facchinetti, David Crystal, Barbara Seidlhofler (Bern: Peter Lang): 115–144). She has published monographs on Henry James (Figura e rappresentazione in Henry James: 1896–1901 (Alessandria: Edizioni Dell’Orso, 2000)), on discourse analysis (Writing for the Media (Milano: Arcipelago, 2003)), on the New Journalism (Cronaca come romanzo: Truman Capote e il New Journalism (Milano: Arcipelago, 2003)) and, more recently, on communication in the age of Augmented Reality (Augmented Linguistics (Milano: Arcipelago, 2012)). She has also written extensively on language and the law in British, American and Italian authors. Among her latest publications, “On Crimes, Punishments, and Words. Legal and Language Issues in Cesare Beccaria’s Works,” in Literature and Human Rights. The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse, ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2015): 289–308. She has been a member of AIDEL since 2008.

Published Online: 2015-8-27

Published in Print: 2015-9-18

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/pol-2015-0021

Keywords for this article

language; voice; power; speech acts; monarchy; broadcasting media; received pronunciation; Australian English; American English; conversational rules