KNjIŽEVNOST I POLITIKA – DELIBERATIVNO BESEDNIŠTVO DOBRICE ĆOSIĆA I NIKOLE MILOŠEVIĆA

Abstract

: Modern political oratory in Serbia within the re‑established multi‑party political system (during the 1990s) is one of the most important means of political struggle, a way of placing political ideas, as well as a way of manipulating public opinion. At the same time, it is a special genre of speech since the formal‑aesthetic dimension of shaping political messages can be viewed as functional tools for forming opinions and spreading political ideas. This paper deals with political rhetoric of two prominent Serbian intellectuals, writer Dobrica Ćosić and famous university professor Nikola Milošević, who, in their public speeches, advocated the solution to the complex state and national problems and analysed the “spirit of the times”. From the point of view of stylistics and rhetorics, the paper analyses Ćosić’s and Milošević’s political speeches, underlining their common features and distinctive rhetoric characteristics. Their rhetoric is observed within the democratic paradigm of political rhetoric, which from 1990 to 2000 appears as a counterbalance to the dominant, authoritarian communication paradigm of political communication. These speakers developed their political ideas as an antithesis to the authoritarian rhetoric heritage; they advocated the respect for human rights and introduction of political pluralism and parliamentary democracy in Serbia. In addition to this, Ćosić andMilošević were not polititians by profession, but writers.