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Recent work in conversation analysis suggests that audience responses to political speeches are strongly influenced by the rhetorical construction of political messages. This paper shows that seven basic rhetorical formats were associated with nearly 70% of the applause produced in response to 476 political speeches to British party political conferences in 1981. The relationship between rhetoric and response is broadly independent of political party, the political status of th speaker, and the popularity of the message. Performance factors are found to influence the likelihood of audience response strongly.
Heritage et al. (Tue,) studied this question.