Konstitutiv actio: Stemmeføring og kropssprog i retoriske identifikations­processer

This article introduces the concept of constitutive actio in a rhetorical critique of Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen’s speech at the corona press briefing on March 11, 2020. The analysis illustrates how the speaker’s voice use, body language and facial expressions contribute to the constitution of a discursive audience identity. The article examines voice use and body language phenomena such as emphases, pauses and gaze direction in the perspective expressed in Maurice Char­land’s constitutive rhetoric (1987). The article thus seeks also to expand the rhetorical understanding of voice use, which often focuses on persuasion or the audience’s attribution of character traits or credibility to the speaker.