Franks Explaination of the Main Characterstics in Obamas...

Frank (2009) examines three characteristics in Obama’s inauguration speech- mythic, literary, and rhetoric- to explicates how the president fit these signatures into resurrection of a cosmopolitan expression of American Civil Religion. He surmises Obama sets out to create a multi-religious and racial American culture; this deviates from conventional westernized philosophy, which espouses that propositions cannot be simultaneously true and differences never coincide. Rhetoric, in contrary, deals with soft oppositions and is debatable, offering leeway for identities to reconcile. Myths have explanatory power to highlight values and trigger listeners into action. Furthermore, Frank conceives Obama’s experience in writing books to be helpful†¦show more content†¦contemplative expository function differentiates inaugurals from State of Union address, in which proposals are presented for congressional action† (p. 40). Hence, Frank should have made clear Obamaâ €™s vision that forms the basis of his signatures instead of policies. Furthermore, I suppose there are two critical ideas behind Obama’s encouragement of a cosmopolitan civil religion that Frank should explicate. First, the address’s theme can be succinctly expressed as harnessing strength from America’s common history. Beyond simply an advocacy for unity, Obama has the intention to motivate a collective call-to-action in response to the detrimental 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Allen and Carletti, 2009), and to preserve social stability by mitigating prevailing distrust against Muslims due to September 11 attacks (Mcmorris, 2010). Calling for unity is in fact a springboard to motivate a collective call-to-action. Obama mentions, â€Å"we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task†. Next, bringing citizens toge ther has a role at the inaugural ceremony itself. As Campbell argues, â€Å"Once the audience has been united, it can perform its role in the inaugural ceremony. Inaugural addresses themselves attest to the witnessing