What to know
- Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum received a standing ovation and attention from international media outlets.
- Carney argued Canada has long lived within the “lie” of American hegemony.
- Experts say the speech’s success lies in masterful storytelling, simple but diverse vocabulary, minimal repetition, and subtle allusions.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 16-minute speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland received a standing ovation, a rare occurrence at the summit.
“One of the things that’s quite interesting about yesterday’s speech is how extensively it’s been covered in non-Canadian media” Jack Cunningham, international relations professor at U of T, tells Now Toronto.
“We’re seeing a fairly sharp, pronounced, and probably lasting shift from one international order to another. That happens rarely and is always a tumultuous process.”
In his speech, Carney urged his audience to rethink geopolitics in “an era of great power rivalry” where the “rule-based order is fading” and “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
He asked them to “take their signs down,” to end the illusory cycle of compliance.
Carney says Canada has participated in the “American hegemony” without much resistance for too long, calling it “living within the lie.”
“This bargain no longer works,” he said.
Canada and the United States have been allies since the early 20th century. The two countries continue to be closely interlinked in matters of politics, economy, and national security. That close tie was put to the test with the inauguration of President Donald Trump last year and the tariffs that ensued.
“Mr. Trump seems intent on weaponizing every institution, every international connection he can for national advantage,” Cunningham says.
The Trump administration published its National Security Strategy last November stating that it aims “to ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come.”
“The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty,” it reads. “The United States will chart our own course in the world and determine our own destiny, free of outside interference.”
“[The strategy] made it quite explicit that he seeks a pretty overweening position of dominance within the Western Hemisphere,” Cunningham says.
Since Carney took office last March, in the thick of Trump’s tariff threats, he has been steadily vocal in his response to the Trump administration’s agenda. For instance, he spoke of the “risks of sudden disruptions to global trade” in his op-ed published in The Economist last October.
“[The op-ed] that actually articulated some of the same ideas didn’t get a lot of attention but this speech has,” Cunningham says.
So, why did his speech get a lot of attention?
Now Toronto spoke with a linguistic expert about the elements that made the speech standing ovation-worthy.
“He’s a masterful storyteller,” Sali Tagliamonte, a linguistic professor at U of T tells Now Toronto.
“His word choices were very clearly thoughtful without being pompous.”
There is no derogatory language
Throughout his speech, Carney relies on the connotations of words as opposed to their explicit meanings.
“Even when he talks about power and power being a more negative thing, he says, ‘hard power,’” Tagliamonte says. “There is not a single word of denigration.”
This is perhaps in stark contrast to his American counterpart, who has a reputation for calling others “stupid” on public platforms.
@abcnews "If they don't get this done, they are stupid." President Trump says he believes Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and Russian President Putin are at a point now where they can come together to agree a peace deal. "I don't want to insult anyone, but you’ve got to get this deal done. Too many people are dying," Trump said. #news #donaldtrump #ukraine #russia ♬ original sound – ABC News
There is minimal repetition
Carney’s speech in full is just over 2,000 words. When Tagliamonte ran it through AntConc, a text analysis software, it calculated there were just shy of 800 unique words in it — “a considerable number,” she says.
“[All too often] you have people [repeating words], which is kind of like you’re trying to forcefully impress those views onto people,” she says.
Tagliamonte also points out another interesting fact: the most common words used in Carney’s speech.
“The most common word in the English language is the word ‘the’. And true, in this speech, that is the most common word,” she says.
A less common word that appears frequently in it, according to Tagliamonte, is the word ‘us’.
“It’s the second-most used word in his speech. It’s not one that typically figures in the top ten.”
He used common words
Despite the sheer diversity of vocabulary, Carney’s speech uses simple words, understood by many.
“He’s not using three and four syllable words. And the words he uses that have four syllables, like ‘architecture’, most people know,” Tagliamonte says.
“He [refrained from using] words that someone with a reasonable amount of education isn’t going to know. … He’s reaching a lot of people without dumbing down what he’s saying at all.”
He employs the art of speaking between the lines
His method was two-fold.
First, he relied on a parable (a short narrative that delivers a message through analogy) from The Power of the Powerless, an essay from the Czech dissident Václav Havel, to deliver his anti-authoritarian stance.
“The best and the most lasting books on the planet are the ones that have parables in them,” Tagliamonte says.
“People listen to and learn from stories more than they learn from spewed facts. ‘Ninety-two per cent this, 72 per cent that,’ who remembers that stuff? Very few people. But everyone can remember a story.”
Second, it’s not just what he said; it’s what he didn’t say.
“Canada is a pluralistic society that works,” Carney said. “Our public square is loud, diverse, and free.”
To this, Tagliamonte begs the question: Where are the public squares not loud, not diverse, and not free?
In referring to Canada as loud, diverse, and free, Carney effectively puts the spotlight on authoritarian regimes around the world whose public squares are “loud, maybe, but not diverse and certainly not free,” she says.
“[The speech] was a symphony, not a jingle. … It’s an incredibly rich and well-articulated story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
