From intellect to elocutio: a model of rhetorical analysis for the personal column

Abstract

In all likelihood, no journalistic genre today is going through a happier time from a quantitative point of view than the opinion column. Served in abundance by print media; rich and varied in terms of content, approaches and styles; and vehicle for the entire range of social, political and cultural approaches that make up public opinion (or at least those that the establishment can accept), the column has become an irreplaceable piece of the current journalistic mosaic, which remains lame and loses appeal to readers without the personal input of their signatures. It is an identifying and unifying element of the discourse of the press, since it finds accommodation in any printed medium (newspapers, Sunday supplements, magazines ...), and for some years even in the audiovisual media.

The column fascinates by its urgent diagnosis of reality, served in the heat of events in just 60 lines; for its literary and expressive value, undoubted in some cases, less obvious in others, but always present even as an aspiration; by the influence that it exerts - or can exert - on the audience, thanks to its persuasive quality; due to the intrinsic interest of the judgments it transmits, expressed unambiguously even though they are minor or arbitrary; in short, due to the personality of the columnists themselves, who through daily work become familiar interlocutors for their readers. With the column, you have access to a different way of interpreting the present, more creative, closer and less urgent than that sought by other media.