"Face-work night": Representations of Self and Other(s) in the Presidential Concession Speech

In the framework of the correspondences between pragmatics and rhetoric, this paper sets out to explore the notion of ethos beyond its rhetorical function, from a linguistic and pragmatic viewpoint, comparing it to the pragmatic concept of face (section 2). To investigate the ubiquitous presence of ethos in discourse and its connections with pragmatic facework within actual cultural constraints, the analysis will focus on a genre typical of political communication in the US, the Concession Speech (cs), which occurs in a strongly institutionalized context and displays evident ritual components (section 3). As a case study, the Concession Speech by John McCain will be analyzed, pointing to the processes of image-construction involving, beside the Self, both the Audience (the supporters) and the Enemy (the winning adversary and his supporters), and comparing them with the strategies adopted in the corresponding Victory Speech (vs) by Barak Obama (section 4). In the conclusions (section 5), the recurring patterns of the genre will be summarized and discussed, with a view to emphasizing the role of the ethotic component as the rhetoric counterpart of pragmatic facework.