From Personalization to Parrhesia: A Multimodal Analysis of Autobiographical Recalls in Barack Obama’s Political Speech - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 344

may be repetitive when the two signals have the same meaning, additional when
a signal adds a meaning congruent with that of another signal, contradictory
when the meaning of the signal in question contrasts with that of a concomitant
signal, or independent when the signal in question is not in relation to another
signal produced simultaneously because they are part of two independent plans
of action.

In multimodal communication the signals expressed in the various modalities
combine and are integrated with coherence. Sometimes, however, the signals
manifest discordant, clashing, or contradictory meanings. These are cases of
error, ambivalence, and deception in communication. Contradictory communicative
behaviors, for instance, are a sign of deception. In the hypothesis where deception
is expressed in relation to genuinely felt emotions, the emotions seep out through
an imperfect simulation given by micromovements not belonging to the expressive
category typical of the emotion that the sender desires to convey or certain time
lags in the expression. When instead the content of what is being said is false, the
deception is revealed by the filtering through of emotions set off by the very act
of deceiving, and there is contradiction between meanings expressed in different
modalities. For this reason, the task of the score is to establish whether there is a
correspondence between the perceivable behavior of the speaker and his thinking.
Through further analysis carried out using the “facial action coding system”
(FACS) it was possible to classify muscle movements of the face. This classification
was developed by a Swedish anatomist, Carl-Herman Hjortsjo, and then recodified
by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen in 1978, with updates made by Ekman and
Friesen together with Joseph C. Hager in 2002. Using this technique of analysis
of facial microexpressions it is possible to identify the inner emotional state of a
person, obtaining indications on the subject's hidden thoughts and feelings.
The technique attributes a combination of corresponding codes to certain facial
micromovements [called action units (AUs)] made by the person. The combination
of these movements may lead to a further decodification or “translation” of the code
into a predominantly emotional and generally unconscious meaning.

17.3 27 July 2004: Barack Obama Speech at the Democratic

National Convention

On 27 July 2004 in the campaign of the presidential election that would lead to
George W. Bush's election for a second mandate, the unknown Illinois politician
Barack Obama makes a programmatic speech at the Democratic Convention in
Boston. It should have been one of the many preparatory speeches in the lead-up to
the main speech by John Kerry, but it became the Obama revelation at the national
level.