Life as Prime Minister: A Genre Study of Speeches Made by Australian Prime Ministers Following Leadership Spills

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between 2010 and 2018, four Australian prime ministers were removed from office outside of a federal election, by leadership spills initiated by their party colleagues. Each of the prime ministers—Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull—delivered a televised speech shortly after the leadership spill. The speeches provided an early opportunity, long before the preparation of any book-length political memoir, for each departing prime minister to narrate their political life and affirm their political legacy and identity. The speeches can be conceptualised as a rhetorical genre of life narrative in an Australian context. Applying Carolyn R. Miller’s theory of genre as social action (“Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–167. 10.1080/00335638409383686.) confirms the speeches as a rhetorical genre, not because of their similarities in form and content but because they respond to the same recurring rhetorical situation—the leadership spill—and have shared social functions in their assertion of the rhetor’s (speaker’s) achievements, integrity and authenticity. All address the past, present and future; project a defining aspect of character; refer to significant others; and place life as prime minister in other contexts. In doing so, the speeches resemble but differ from some other forms of life narrative.