The Kennedy-Nixon Debates - Political Speech on TV

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1, University of Frankfurt (Main), course: Portraits of Presidents, language: English, abstract: The following coursework deals with the first Kennedy - Nixon debate that was broadcast live on television, on September 26th1960. In its first part it will concentrate on the question of what constitutes a debate and how it can be contrasted with other types of conversation like discussion or arguement. Especially political speech has always been reproached for ambigious language or persuasive usage to deceive the listener. Thus, the coursework will digress a bit to investigate the matter a bit further before starting to juxtapose the video material of the television debate - important terminology shall be introduced beforehand - and the speeches as such in their raw material. At the end of the coursework you will find a DVD attached that shows the first television debate of Kennedy and Nixon. As several pictures of this debate are included in this coursework, I will quickly explain how to find them on the DVD. The DVD contains two chapters with 4 tracks each. The tracks, however, are not as important as the chapters since the counter starts again at 0:00:00 as soon as the second chapter starts. The entire DVD has an approximate running time of 30 minutes, 15 minutes for each chapter. Thus, referring to a specific point in the video material, I simply put down the time-code where to find it, for instance 0:12:23, which means 12 minutes and 23 seconds in the first chapter, while 0:12:23 [2] refers to the same time-code but in the second chapter, as indicated by the number in brackets.