ABSTRACT
The studies reported in the previous two chapters raised a number of significant questions about the validity of Atkinson’s theory of rhetoric. It was found that applause may occur uninvited in the absence of rhetorical devices. It was also found that only a mean 61 per cent of applause instances in six political speeches were fully synchronised with speech. But in this latter study, only a global figure for the proportion of mismatches was reported; these were not analysed in terms of the distinction between invited and uninvited applause. Nor indeed do we have any idea of the relative distribution of invited and uninvited applause in political speeches. Hence, it was decided to conduct a further study in which synchrony could be investigated in relation to the distinction between invited and uninvited applause (Bull and Wells, 2002a).
