She argues that presidential State of the Union Addresses is a genre characteristic of the American presidency (Jamieson 5), and because of such a standard format, the audience has been conditioned to expect a specific rhetorical oratory. Furthermore, Jamieson argues that when these expectations are not met, audiences and critics become frustrated and the rhetoric proves to be ineffective. She asserts that these frustration arise because the perception of the proper response to an unprecedented rhetorical situation grows from antecedent rhetorical forms (Jamieson 3). She further establishes this point by using the example of a eulogy at a funeral. There are certain vocabulary words specific to a eulogy. There is a somber and mellow tone with which it is usually read. Therefore Jamieson makes the point that if an author does not honor such expectations then, the speech may not be well received by the audience. .
While remaining in the genre of presidential rhetoric, Teten further elaborates on the notion of the evolution of presidential rhetoric. In his study, he presents three different eras of presidential rhetoric which he deduced to be the founding period, the traditional period and the modern period. He does this by randomly picking fifty State of the Union Addresses from George Washington, a founding president to Bill Clinton, a modern president. He conducts a content analysis of the speeches he picks, and focuses on specific word usage, like we and our, across different presidential State of the Union Addresses. He discovers that after the year 1914, there was an increase from 0.4 to 3 percent in the usage of public address indicators like we and our (Teten 11). This indicated that presidents wanted their audience to view them as being part of the audience. He concludes that [presidents] going public, or at the very least, increased identification with the directed audience is illustration as being on the rise (Teten 11).