The Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Education

The Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on EducationPresident Obama is famous for his encouraging speech. On September 8, 2009, he delivered a national address to the students of America. During this special address, the president spoke directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. Through challenging students to learn to take responsibility for their learning and countries, overcome difficulties, work hard and ask questions, this speech flows naturally and fluently. Undoubtedly, this speech is successful and effective. In this paper, I will analyze it from rhetorical perspective, mainly from writing and delivery aspects to find out why it works.1.1From Writing AspectThis speech is a well-written work mainly for three aspects: the exquisite invention, the appropriate arrangement and forceful style. In invention, he makes the clear and significant argument--- to study seriously. He makes good use of the “kairos” and chooses the first day of a new school year to make speech. Particularly, his appropriate establishment of ethos, pathos and logos is remarkable and worth learning.Firstly, as the President, Obama establishes his respectable ethos. He expounds the importance of education and persuades youth to take their responsibility not only for their learning but also f or the country. He relates every single’s destiny with the whole nation, which links the common people’s work to the development of nation and drives a sense of mission come into being in audience. This sense of mission links the president and audience together and will motivate and inspire the muddled youth to somebody with lofty and aspiring ideas. Meanwhile, it makes audience sense that what they do is full of significance and meaning. Thus, they will be proud of what they strive for as well as their nation. By the end of the speech, Obama again makes his standpoint on the contribution youth will make for the country. He challenges the listeners’ ideal to make contribution for country and close the speech with “god bless you , and god bless American”, whi ch fully reveal his love of America that makes him respected not only by America but also people all around the world.Pathos is also displayed appropriately in this speech. He takes notice of hisintended audience and takes them into consideration. As a p resident, he doesn’t treat him as a person far removed from the masses and reality and adopt an ordering tone. Instead, he fully take his audience into consideration and speak from an amiable and respectable elder’ view to show his care and understanding t o young people. At the beginning, he uses “I know ….” to show his understanding and lenience toward young people’s nervousness on the first day and laziness to the bed. Then he relates his story when he was young to shorten the distance between he and his audience, which is favorable for his audience to accept him with goodwill. In the same way, when he speaks of the challenges some youth have to overcome, he sets his own story as an example to explain that difficulties can be overcome and this can’t be the excuse for not trying. Apart from his examples, he also sets some common and ordinary people’s exemplary deeds to show people in essence are the same and everybody will meet all kinds of difficulties, which is helpful for the young people to treat difficulties with positive attitude.The logo of this speech is another shining point. On the day of a new school year, he proposes his expectations on youth and makes his thesis clear: drive the students to shoulder their responsibility for their learning and for the country, which means the demand of a positive attitude toward learning. However, in this process, it is unavoidable to meet challenges and difficulties. Naturally, to help his audience to meet difficulties, he set examples to encourage them to overcome difficulties in life. Apart from overcoming difficulties, he wants the young to work hard and get to practice because success is often be obtained by many times’ of failures. Lastly, he suggests they should ask questions fearlessly to acquire new knowledge through other’s help. In general, the logic is clear and easy to follow.The arrangement of this speech generally corresponds to young people’s psychology. From the early understanding and tolerance to his focus on shouldering the responsibility and then encourage them to overcome difficulties to the last suggestions about working hard and asking questions bravely. Especially, I appreciate the beginning which is really cordial and attracts people’s attention and goodwill easily even though the case is an honorable case in rhetoric which has immediatesupport from audience.From stylistic view, his speech is rhythmic and full of flavor. It has the right tone with a kind of magical function. Even when faced with thousands of people, his speaking makes everyone feels that Obama is talking to him. The rhythmic effect is mainly achieved by the use of repetition and parallelism. Apart from the appeal to logic and passion, the speaker’s success in making an effective speech depends largely on the effective use of language. Parallelism relies on the use of similar sentence to express related contents to achieve its effect. Repetition is featured by use of words. Repeating a key word can lead to show special focus on the matter or the audience’s attention can be a ttracted. In this speech, Obama use several sentence parallelisms, making a marvelous effect. For example, when persuading the young to meet the challenges and insist on their study, he says: “that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad a ttitude; that’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school; that’s no excuse for not trying.” Here, he uses three “that’s no excuse” to emphasize the importance of persistence in study and this effect is achieved.1.2 From Delivery AspectAs we know, a successful speech not only needs to be well written, but also must be delivered in a forceful and convincing and passionate way. This is called the delivery. This perfect speech is not only well-composed but also is delivered forcefully and encouragingly, which mainly attributes to his optimism, or being optimistic as an American. When he urges youth to courageously meet the challenges in life, he hold a positive attitude toward the young people and has faith in them. When he demands the hard work of youth, he believes they can do well and will not let him down. Just because He is proud of and be optimistic to America and his people, the audience can be touched and encouraged. He plays his role as a navigator to lead the people going forward and being optimistic.In addition to optimism, his speech is full of passion. Good delivery has much to do with the way which the speaker uses emotion. Aristotle calls it “Pathos”. Here, this pathos refers to the emotion in the delivery process. It refers to the passion that thespeaker injects into the speech while delivering it so that the audience develops sympathy or support with the speaker and is influenced by the speaker’s argument. We hear people say, if you want to move your listeners, you need to move yourself first. This is where emotion comes into play. In the delivery of this speech, Obama makes it passionately and as an audience, I am moved by his passion.Through analyzing this famous speech from rhetorical perspective, how language functions in this speech is fully displayed. We can not only read between lines to understand this speech microcosmically and profoundly but also can appreciate Obama’s purposeful and masterful crafty from writer’s perspective and his ski llful and forceful delivery from speaker’s view.。