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How to Conduct a Speech Analysis and Present It Like a Pro

Who doesn't dream of delivering the perfect speech? Every person who speaks in front of a crowd wants to leave them moved. However, not everyone can do that.

Even the greatest speakers have worked for years to master the art of public speaking . Although we may not know their secret, we can learn a lot from their work. That's where speech analysis helps. Let's find out what it is and how to benefit from it.

What Is Speech Analysis?

You probably know the standard definition already – it is a process of studying a speech's good, bad, and pain points. However, what does it have to offer to you?

In essence, speech analysis means understanding the useful information in the speech and setting it aside from what isn't handy. For instance, a renowned speaker comes on stage to deliver a speech , and you have to perform a speech analysis – what will you look for?

You will observe the speaker's gestures, body language , confidence, usage of terms, sentence structure, quality of speech, proper delivery of the message, and much more.

This plethora of factors contributes to a single word called speech analysis. Now that you know what it is, let's have a comprehensive look into these factors.

How Does Speech Analysis Work?

For analyzing a speech, the first thing you need is information.

You need to know the perfect way to begin the speech , convey the message and give an immediate call to action.

You also must identify where the speaker is wrong and what was lacking in the speech.

For instance, if the targeted audience is teenagers, you should be able to tell if the humor and jokes used were appropriate. Was the speech engaging or lackluster? Did the audience understand the message?

Let's see what these aspects entail below.

Introduction of the Speech Analysis

First thing's first, add an introduction. It usually begins with a hook, something to entice the reader. Then it mentions the time and place of the speech, followed by an overview of the address.

Next, you need to mention the speaker, the topic, and the key points of the speech.

Body of the Analysis

Once done with the analysis, you need to begin crafting the body. This includes some special and some general details of the content and delivery, and writing them in a critique manner.

Usually, this begins with a certain action of the speaker, like tone, gesture , or emotion.

The description of some of the common factors is given below.

Identify the Objective of Speech

The purpose plays the most important part here as it is the deciding factor of the nature of the speech.

Is it an entertainment speech with a few jokes and funny lines here and there or an educational speech delivering quality information?

Was it a script written to motivate the audience for a bigger cause? Was it delivered in a manner to promote a product among the audience?

What is the message being conveyed? If it promotes peace and equality and focuses on making the world a better place, your analysis should consider that.

Similarly, identify if the person delivering the speech is the right person for the job. He must deliver the speech perfectly or at least achieve the purpose set.

Once you get your head around these points, making an analysis becomes easy.

Be Mindful of the Target Audience

A good speaker knows that a speaking style used for 50 cannot be used for 2000 people. Similarly, the tone or technique used with business leaders cannot be used with homemakers.

You need to see how well the topic resonates with the audience and how engaged they are.

Say a spokesperson delivers a speech about leading SEO strategies in 2022. The audience will comprise people familiar with digital marketing or those who want to learn it.

It will include related terms, anecdotes, stories , facts, and stats that will bind the audience to the topic.

For the speech analysis, you must also consider if the speech is being broadcasted to an external audience on streaming platforms.

Bring in the Juicy Part: Content of the Speech

The heading says it all.

We cannot stress enough. The content of the speech is by far the most vital part of the script. It can make or break the overall mood.

The Opening: Pay special attention to the opening of the speech. Usually, a hook, controversial statement, or question is used to garner the audience's attention.

An interactive, intuitive opening is much preferred to a dry opening, saying, "Hello everyone, thank you for having me."

The Main Body: Once you write all this down, move on to the body of the content. You need to deduce if the topic was authoritative. Did it include a particular focus on the subject matter? Did it have stories and facts that connected back to the issue?

How did the speaker transition from point to point ?

Speech analysis also requires you to check if statistics or visuals were used to support the arguments. It is better to use graphics to convey the message better, and you need to study if they did the work. You must analyze how well the speech was constructed and organized efficiently.

The Ending Words: Lastly, determine how valuable, memorable, and well defined the ending of the speech was.

Was it concise? Did the review do justice to the speech? Did it list the good and bad parts of the speech? These points will make up for a strong conclusion influencing the reader's mind that you have a strong hold on the subject here.

These were the main three points of speech content; the opening, body, and conclusion. This is an easy approach to follow and can help you with speech analysis quickly.

Observe Style and Delivery Manner

In scripting and speaking, the delivery style and techniques are the best tools, provided you know when and how to use them.

When analyzing a speech, you must view the speech from a critic's perspective. Observe the mood and vibe of the audience during the speech.

Were people bored or engaged ? Was the session interactive? Did it teach you something you didn't know?

These questions will tell you the experience of the audience. Try putting yourself in the audience's shoes, and you will understand how useful it was for them.

Next, observe the speaker.

Was he nervous ? Did he know what he was saying? Often at such times, the body language communicates the confidence of the speaker .

You may also notice the stage area used by the speaker. Did he pace around the stage or stand in one place? All these factors determine the speaker's delivery style and make a significant portion of the analysis.

Determine Correct Usage of Visuals

Yet another critical factor of speech analysis; determining the proper use of visuals. This adds so much life and energy to the speech. The experience becomes more realistic.

According to research, more than 67% of people feel more inclined and engaged in speeches that include visuals.

This is generally true too. An average person would enjoy a speech with infographics, charts, images, short clips, and figures rather than a dull, verbal presentation.

You need to see if the speaker used sufficient visual aids and whether they were succinct in delivering the message.

Did the visuals complement the speech? Were they fun and easy to understand? Did the audience like and engage with them?

Observing these during the speech will make the analysis quick and condensed.

Consider Language and Choice of Words

Since language and words are the modes of communication for the speaker here, it is essential to know how he uses them.

Say the topic is about the best places to buy Bitcoin. You now need to see if the speaker uses the proper terms to address the topic.

Does he explain the concept of Crypto and how it works? Does he tell how Bitcoin reached fame and all its background?

That makes for the comprehensiveness of the topic.

Next, inspect the use of language. Is it appropriate for the audience? Does it use slang words, or is it too bland? Are the terms difficult to understand?

A fine point to make in your speech analysis would be the flow of the speech. In this, you can mention how fast or slow the speaker was.

His articulation of words , the length of sentences, and their ease of understanding. You can also mention the uniqueness or repetitiveness of words, sentences, ideas, or rhetorical devices in the speech .

The only way you can do justice to a speech analysis is by mentioning every good and bad point of the speaker.

Sound Experience

You might wonder why this is important – truth be told, this is an essential factor in crafting a speech analysis. How you hear something tells your mind how to perceive it.

For example, you purchase an online course.

As soon as you hear the tutor's voice, you feel annoyed and request a refund. Why?

Because the first thing your brain captured was the voice of the video playing in your mind, it might have been too sharp, distorted, or garbled for you to hear.

The same is the case with a speech; what you hear and how you hear influence your willingness to listen to the script .

So, you must include how well the speakers worked in your speech analysis. The pitch of the sound, how easy it was to hear and discern the words of the speaker.

This section in the analysis could also use the speaking pace of the reader. Additionally, talk about how the speaker paused after regular intervals to create suspense, arouse excitement, express grief, make a remark or add value to his words.

You will feel special if someone looks you in the eye while you speak – so does the audience. Being a critic and speech analyst, you must observe how the speaker makes eye contact with the audience.

Does he shy away? Does he smile while making direct contact? Or does he keep looking elsewhere, avoiding the audience?

Adding all these points to your analysis will give it leverage over the others.

Gestures also include the movements and timings of the speaker. Did he use his hand to add energy and influence to his words? Were the gestures natural or forced? Were they distracting?

This part won't take up as much space or information but can help identify the right person.

Conclusion of the Speech Analysis

The conclusion is the final part of the analysis, where you summarize the speech and write an ending note.

Say you heard a speech about a woman who lost her husband to the DEA agents. She told with extreme pain and grief how they encountered him and shot him at point blank.

Now here's how you can write its conclusion:

"Samantha's speech engulfed me and the entire audience the moment she began her story. It hooked me, and I could feel her pain moving like waves in the hall and the audience.

However, I believe that the tone and pace should have been slightly lighter for my liking. Otherwise, the unfortunate incident with her husband didn’t allow her to control her emotions."

This will be your judgment and remarks that you acquired throughout the speech analysis. That makes up for a satisfactory conclusion to your speech analysis.

Final Verdict

You might find it challenging to analyze a speech at first, but once you learn the pain points, it's a child's game. Use the above factors to analyze your next speech and get an A+ on that assignment.

A good speech analysis manifests the intent, the audience, the content, the delivery style, visuals, and much more. Now that you know how speech analysis works, you're well versed with all the points.

That brings us to the end of this post. Happy Speaking!

Related: How to Give a Speech Evaluation in Toastmasters

Ace the Presentation

A 9-Step Practical Guide On How To Analyze A Speech – Speech Analysis of I have A Dream Speech as an Example

A speech, as we all know, is a vocal opinion of a speaker’s stand. Speeches are usually used as an effective tool for rallying support, conveying opinion, as well as influencing the thoughts of others (usually the audience) to accept or agree with the thoughts of the Speaker.

For a speech to achieve its goal, the words used in a speech are usually chosen carefully. This is so because, through a speech, the audience can perceive the interest or personal motives of the Speaker.

However, in most cases, there is usually a need to consider what was not said in a speech, or what the motive of the Speaker was. For this reason, speech analysis comes in handy in order to have a full understanding of a speech.

What is Speech Analysis?

In its simplest form, speech analysis or speech interpretation can be said to be the process of extracting important pieces of information that are contained in a speech. When carrying out speech analysis, there is usually a need to take note of some essential and necessary components of the Speech . These include;

1. Analyzing the purpose or intent of the Speech

For instance, a speech may be written to entertain the audience with some humorous lines, persuade the audience into thinking or agreeing with the opinion of the Speaker, or to inform the audience about something which the Speaker is skilled in.

2. The target audience and how the Speech relates to them

Also of paramount importance during speech analysis is  taking note of who the target audience is, and how the Speech relates to the audience .

For instance, when analyzing a speech that was delivered to support the need for a pay rise in an organization, in that case, it will be expected that the audience listening to such a speech will be members of staff of the organization who are clamoring for a rise in their pay.

3. The effective and validity of the Speech 

Finally, when carrying out speech analysis, another core aspect to consider is the effectiveness and  validity of the Speech to see whether or not it contains relevant and important proofs  such as examples, statistics, facts, and dates to back the claims contained the Speech.

Still using the same above example about a speech about a pay rise in an organization, the Speaker may have to include facts such as the agreed terms for a pay rise in the organization. 

With that, such a speech would be said to have concrete facts and evidence to support its claims and the need for it.

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What is the First Step in Rhetoric Analysis?

The Structure of a Speech

Although a speech can be written and presented in more ways than one, every Speech usually shares three basic elements in common. These elements include;

• The Introduction of a Speech

The introduction of a speech is one of the most important elements of a speech since it is usually designed to grab the attention of the audience, either with a hook, a preview of what the Speech is all about, a joke, a controversial statement, a startling statistics, why the Speech is important, or a powerful visual.

Introducing a speech with such powerful elements is an excellent way to give the audience reasons why they should listen to the Speaker, instead of starting with a dry  “hello everyone, it’s a great privilege to talk to you today.”

Due to the ultimate role which the introduction of a speech plays, making the right choice of other key elements such as body language, words, and other visuals to usher in a speech are all very important to make the introduction of a speech achieve its goal.

• The Body of a Speech

After the introduction comes the body of a speech, which is the part that contains the Speaker’s main points. These points are usually expected to be supported with relevant examples, details, statistics, and facts, which are explained in simply and concisely.

In the body of a speech, the Speaker should make necessary effort to ensure that all the facts and pieces of evidence presented in the Speech aligns with the primary objective of the Speech. As mentioned earlier, these facts and proofs should all be presented in a simple and clear language for the understanding of the audience.

• The Conclusion of a Speech

The concluding part of a speech also packs as much power as the other two parts mentioned earlier. 

In the conclusion section, the Speaker makes a substantial effort to remind the audience of the major points made in the Speech and then ends the Speech with thought-provoking words that will motivate the audience to respond to the final call to action in the Speech.

Also, in the conclusion of a speech, the Speaker should be concise about what he expects from the audience, whether it is for a petition to be signed, requesting their support, for a product to be bought, or for some other specific actions from the audience as contained in the Speech. 

How to Analyze and Interpret a Speech? 9 Key Questions to effective speech Analysis.

When analyzing a speech, there are usually some things, precisely nine questions that you must consider for effective speech analysis.

However, when analyzing a speech, don’t feel satisfied by merely outline these nine important questions in the Speech and answering them. Instead, there should be a complementary explanation or example of how these nine key questions work using a speech as an example. So, in analyzing a speech, here are the 9 key questions you must give appropriate answers to for effective speech analysis .

1. Who is the Speaker?

In analyzing a speech, you have to consider who is the Speaker, and how does the Speaker’s rank, position, personal views, motives, or experience affect the Speech.

2. Who is/are the Audience?

In this case, you have to consider who are the members of the audience. By so doing, you will have to look closely to know whether or not the audience are the people who are directly affected or needs the message conveyed by the content of the Speech.

3. What is the Type of Speech?

By considering the type of Speech under analysis, you try to dig deeper to know the motive or intent of the Speaker for the Speech. 

In this regard, the Speech delivered might be one that is intended to inform or educate the audience, entertain, or even persuade the audience to take certain steps of action.

4. What is the Structure of the Speech?

By analyzing the structure of the Speech, you are to consider how the Speech is being structured by the Speaker. In this case, you are required to analyze whether or not the Speech was well-structured into an introduction, a body and a conclusion.

Also worthy of note about the structure of a speech during analysis is checking to see whether or not there is a governing or central idea that is being captured in every bit of the Speech.

5. What is the Purpose of the Speech?

Like I mentioned earlier, every Speech is usually aimed at achieving a purpose. For some, the purpose might be to persuade the audience, entertain, or even to open the eyes of the audience about a piece of information they are yet to know.

With this, it is therefore very important to consider the purpose of a speech to know the mission of the Speaker when carrying out speech analysis.

6. What is the Content/Circumstances of the Speech

In evaluating the content and circumstances of a speech, you consider the events that have created the need for the Speech. In doing this, you may have to pay closer attention to specific elements such as;  

• Where the Speech is taking place , and how the choice of the geographical location of the Speech affects the acceptance of the Speech by the audience
• When the Speech is being delivered . This is very important because there might a special time or event that is currently going on, which may serve as the best time to deliver such a speech.
• Why is the Speech being delivered? In this case, you look at the reason why the Speaker is giving a speech, and by so doing, you also consider the expectation of the Speaker from the Speech.

7. What are the Techniques used by the Speaker?

Techniques employed by the Speaker are usually the various modes of persuasion, in which the Speaker adopts. These techniques are also known as rhetorical appeals , and they are ways of persuading the audience to believe the Speaker’s point of view.

As a way of swaying the audience to buy the Speaker’s point of view, a speaker may adopt Aristotle’s mode of persuasion known by the names;

• Ethos  – persuading the audience through the credibility, authority, experience, and personality of the Speaker   
• Pathos  – persuading the audience by creating an emotional response, which may either fear, happiness, or sadness through a convincing story or an impassionate plea.
• L ogos  –  persuading the audience through the use of logic, figures, facts, and data in a speech.

Also very important when analyzing a speech is looking out for the use of stylistic devices such as the use of contrast in a statement, repetition (the rule of three using triads), irony, or even imagery by the Speaker.

8. Is the Intention of the Speech Achieved?

By analyzing a speech to see whether or not it has achieved its purpose, you may have to carry out some evaluations to ascertain if the Speech was successful.

•  Affected/impacted the target audience
• Fit into the occasion which it was delivered
• Is convincing
• Use of ethos, pathos, and logs was balanced
• The argument is valid or solid.

9. What is the overall result of the analysis of the Speech?

After a thorough evaluation of a speech, you should be able to come up with a complete summary of the speech analysis outcome. Obviously, this will come as a result of the analysis of the various parts and components of the Speech as mentioned by the various questions above.

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The next point of discussion is a practical example of how to make a speech analysis by using the nine-step approach shared. Before digging into that, let me add below some of the top related and interesting articles that can add to what you’re learning from this one. If any of the titles picks your interest, please click and open in a new tab, so you can check them out later. Enjoy!

The 4 Methods or Types of Speech Delivery

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Analyzing the I Have A Dream Speech by Martin Luther King Jr

In a bid to have a full understanding of how the various questions that should be considered when carrying out speech analysis work, we shall be considering the heroic Speech delivered by a civil rights leader – Martin Luther King Jr, on August 28, 1963, in front of the Lincoln Memorial Mall. 

Before we go straight into the analysis of the “ I Have A Dream ” Speech, let’s take a quick look at the context of the Speech. 

Exactly 100 years ago, the US President, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation of negro slaves in the US, and in 1963 in which the emancipation proclamation was due, it was time for negro slaves to gain absolute freedom and civil rights in the US. 

It was in response to this long-awaited dream come true that Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights activists made the March on Washington in a peaceful protest to have the present parliament in 1963 to enact the emancipation proclamation and put an end to their years of captivity.

Related Article: The I Have A Dream Speech by Martin Luther King Jr (with Video+Audio+Full Transcript and Historical Context)

Alternatively, you can just watch the 17 minutes full Speech through the link below;

Below are some excerpts of the “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr at the Lincoln National Mall, interspersed with my analytical thoughts in a bid to answer the 9 key questions you must ask when analyzing a speech.

The Speaker, in this case, is Martin Luther King Jr, who is a prominent negro civil rights activist fighting to secure freedom and emancipation for his fellow negroes.

The audience who are physically present and listening to Martin Luther’s “I Have A Dream” speech is majorly the African Americans who are also joining their voices in the fight for their emancipation. 

Also, present during the Speech are other “white” skin American citizens who are probably in support of the emancipation protest by the negroes.

However, it is evident that members of media were present to cover the event, and so it is obvious that the Speech was open to everyone who could have access to a live stream of the Speech

“And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

From the excerpt above, it is obvious that Martin Luther’s Speech was a call demanding for the freedom and the enactment of the civil rights decree in favor of the negroes.

Although Dr. King’s Speech wasn’t divided into distinct parts with an introduction, body, and conclusion, the Speech is, however, seen to be coherent with a smooth flow of information. 

He started by reminding his fellow negroes about the history of the emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

From there, the Speaker, Martin Luther, went further to remind his audience of the undue injustice and oppression the negroes were going through in various parts of America despite the vast national resources available for all to benefit from.

“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.”

Finally, as Martin Luther’s conclusion, there was a call to action for the emancipation and freedom of the negroes in every part of America by the then government.

“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

From the content of Dr. King’s Speech, it is very obvious that the purpose of the Speech was to persuade the American government in 1963 to sign and enact the civil rights law that will bring absolute freedom and emancipation to the African American amongst them.

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquillizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

Firstly, the circumstances that necessitated Martin Luther’s Speech was the undue segregation mated out to the negroes in America.

“There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Also worthy of note and analysis is the geographical location where the Speech was delivered and the choice of such location. 

In this case, Martin Luther’s Speech was delivered at the Lincoln National Mall, just in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. And the choice of this place was to bring to mind the fact that about 100 years ago, Abraham Lincoln, whose statue is right behind the Speaker, signed the Emancipation Proclamation of the negroes in America.

The choice of the time at which the Speech was delivered was the perfect timing since it was precisely 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was made by Abraham Lincoln.

In an attempt to persuade and convince the audience of the need for the negro’s freedom and emancipation, Martin Luther employed pathos to stir up an emotional response of sadness about the undue injustice the negroes were going through;

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.”

Dr. King also employed logos to give data and figures that will support his call for the emancipation of the African Americans.

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”

He also invoked a sentiment of nostalgia and the figure of the President Abraham Lincoln, who he clearly calls a “Great American”, the man who signed and declared the emancipation of negroes, but also was hailed as a hero by both white and negroes.

I also noted the use of irony to express the supposed reasons why the negroes are undergoing injustice and segregation in America.

“But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Although the Speech wasn’t intended to convince or persuade the audience to accept or agree to the need for the emancipation of the negro, since the majority of the audience who present during the Speech were all civil rights activists protesting for the passage of the civil rights law.

However, the “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King can be said to have achieved its intentions, especially as it helped the African American to secure the passage of the civil rights law into effect later in 1964.

In summary, I think that the “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr was a timely call for the freedom of the negroes in America after the successful completion of 100 years after the emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.

The choice of the geographical location for the Speech was apt, and it was the perfect place to call to mind the emancipation proclamation for the negroes.

The use of various speech techniques such as the use of pathos and logos by Martin Luther was a good way to connect with the audience and make them see the urgent need for why African Americans needed to secure civil rights in America. Finally, concluding his speech with a call for freedom to reign in every part of America, where the negroes were undergoing injustice, was a very good way in which Martin Luther King Jr used in ending his Speech.

• https://study.com/academy/lesson/practice-analyzing-and-interpreting-a-speech.html   
• http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/speech-evaluation-1-how-to-study-critique-speech/  
• http://jorgenboge.wikidot.com/how-to-analyze-a-speech
• http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson885/speech-analysis.pdf  
• https://mannerofspeaking.org/speech-analyses/
• https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethos-logos-and-pathos.html
• https://www.theclassroom.com/write-irony-literary-essay-14211.html

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Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Traditionally, teachers have encouraged students to engage with and interpret literature—novels, poems, short stories, and plays. Too often, however, the spoken word is left unanalyzed, even though the spoken word has the potential to alter our space just as much than the written. After gaining skill through analyzing a historic and contemporary speech as a class, students will select a famous speech from a list compiled from several resources and write an essay that identifies and explains the rhetorical strategies that the author deliberately chose while crafting the text to make an effective argument. Their analysis will consider questions such as What makes the speech an argument?, How did the author's rhetoric evoke a response from the audience?, and Why are the words still venerated today?

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From theory to practice.

Nearly everything we read and hear is an argument. Speeches are special kinds of arguments and should be analyzed as such. Listeners should keep in mind the context of the situation involving the delivery and the audience-but a keen observer should also pay close attention to the elements of argument within the text. This assignment requires students to look for those elements.

"Since rhetoric is the art of effective communication, its principles can be applied to many facets of everyday life" (Lamb 109). It's through this lesson that students are allowed to see how politicians and leaders manipulate and influence their audiences using specific rhetorical devices in a manner that's so effective that the speeches are revered even today. It's important that we keep showing our students how powerful language can be when it's carefully crafted and arranged.

Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.

Materials and Technology

• ReadWriteThink Notetaker
• Teacher Background and Information Sheet
• Student Assignment Sheet
• List of Speeches for Students
• Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech with Related Questions
• Historical Speech Research Questions
• Peer Response Handout
• Essay Rubric

This website contains audio of the Top 100 speeches of all time.

Included on this site is audio of famous speeches of the 20th century, as well as information about the speeches and background information on the writers.

The "Great Speeches Collection" from The History Place are available here in print and in audio.

This website includes information on finding and documenting sources in the MLA format.

Preparation

• Review the background and information sheet for teachers to familiarize yourself with the assignment and expectations.  Consider your students' background with necessary rhetorical terms such as claims, warrants, the appeals (logos, pathos, ethos), and fallacies; and rhetorical devices such as tone, diction, figurative language, repetition, hyperbole, and understatement. The lesson provides some guidance for direct instruction on these terms, but there are multiple opportunities for building or activating student knowledge through modeling on the two speeches done as a class.
• Check the links to the online resources (in Websites section) make sure that they are still working prior to giving out this assignment.
• Decide whether you want to allow more than one student to analyze and write about the same speech in each class.
• Look over the  List of Speeches for Students to decide if there are any that you would like to add.
• Look over the suggested Essay Rubric and determine the weights you would like to assign to each category.  For example, you might tell students that Support and Research may be worth three times the value of Style. Customize the Essay Rubric to meet the learning goals for your students.
• Reserve the library for Session Three so the students can do research on their speeches.
• President Obama’s Inauguration Speech.
• Former President Bush’s Defends War in Iraq Speech.
• Former President Bush’s 9/11 Speech.
• Former President Clinton’s “I Have Sinned” Speech.

Student Objectives

Students will

• analyze a speech for rhetorical devices and their purpose.
• identify an author’s purposeful manipulation of language.
• identify elements of argument within a speech.
• write an analysis of a speech with in-text documentation.

Session One

• Begin the lesson by asking students what needs to be present in order for a speech to occur. Though the question may seem puzzling—too hard, or too simple—at first, students will eventually identify, as Aristotle did, the need for a speaker, a message, and an audience.
• The class should discuss audience and the importance of identifying the audience for speeches, since they occur in particular moments in time and are delivered to specific audiences. This is a good time to discuss the Rhetorical Triangle (Aristotelian Triad) or discuss a chapter on audience from an argumentative textbook. You may wish to share information from the ReadWriteThink.org lesson Persuasive Techniques in Advertising and  The Rhetorical Triangle from The University of Oklahoma.
• Next distribute Queen Elizabeth’s speech to the troops at Tilbury and use the speech and its historical context as a model for the processes students will use on the speech they select. Provide a bit of background information on the moment in history.
• Then, as a class, go over  Queen Elizabeth’s speech and discuss the rhetorical devices in the speech and the purpose for each one. Adjust the level of guidance you provide, depending on your students' experiences with this type of analysis. The questions provide a place to start, but there are many other stylistic devices to discuss in this selection.

Discuss the audience and the author’s manipulation of the audience. Consider posing questions such as

• This is a successful speech.  Why?
• Elizabeth uses all of the appeals – logos, pathos, and ethos – to convince all of her listeners to fight for her from the loyal follower to the greedy mercenary.  How?
• The tone shifts throughout the selection.  Where?  But more importantly, why?

Martin Luther King, Jr. uses an appeal to pathos in his “I Have a Dream” speech through his historical allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.” This is particularly effective for his audience of people sympathetic to the cause of African American men and women who would have been especially moved by this particular reference since it had such a significant impact on the lives of African Americans.

Session Two

• Continue the work from the previous session by distributing the  Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments handout and discussing the assignment and what it requires. See the  background and information sheet for teachers for more details.
• Tell students they will be getting additional practice with analyzing a speech as an argument by showing a short  10-minute clip of a presidential speech . Ask students to think about how the particular moment in history and the national audience contribute to the rhetorical choices made by the speaker.
• Lead a discussion of the speech as an argument with regard to purpose and intent. Work with students to identify warrants, claims, and appeals.
• Ask students to consider how the author manipulates the audience using tone, diction, and stylistic devices. What rhetorical devices aided the author’s manipulation of his audience? Discuss a particular rhetorical device that the President used and the purpose it served.
• Share the Essay Rubric and explain to students the expectations for success on this assignment.
• Allow students to select a speech from the List of Speeches for Students . If they wish to preview any of the speeches, they can type the speaker's name and the title of the speech into a search engine and should have little difficulty finding it.

Session Three

• Take the students to the library and allow them to research their speeches. They should locate their speech and print a copy for them to begin annotating for argumentative structure and rhetorical devices.
• What was the speaker up against?  What is the occasion for the speech?
• What did the author have to keep in mind when composing the text?  
• What were his or her goals?  
• What was his or her ultimate purpose?  
• What was his or her intent?
• Remind students that the writer of the speech is sometimes not the person who delivered the speech, for example, and this will surprise some students. Many people assume that the speaker (president, senator, etc.) is always the writer, and that’s not always the case, so ask your students to check to see who wrote the speech. (They might be surprised at the answer. There’s always a story behind the composition of the speech.)
• Help students find the author of the speech because this will challenge some students. Oftentimes, students assume the speaker is the author, and that’s sometimes not the case. Once the speechwriter is identified, it is easier to find information on the speech. Help students find the history behind the speech without getting too bogged down in the details. They need to understand the climate, but they do not need to be complete experts on the historical details in order to understand the elements of the speech.
• If they wish, students can use the ReadThinkWrite Interactive Notetaker to help them track their notes for their essays. Remind them that their work cannot be saved on this tool and should be printed by the end of the session so they can use it in future work.
• For Session Four, students must bring a thesis, an outline, and all of their research materials to class for a workday. Remind them to refer to the Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments , the Essay Rubric , and any notes they may have taken during the first two sessions as they begin their work.
• The thesis statement should answer the following question: What makes this speech an effective argument and worthy of making this list?

Session Four

• Set up students in heterogeneous groups of four. Ask students to share their outlines and thesis statements.
• Go around to check and to monitor as students share their ideas and progress. The students will discuss their speeches and their research thus far.
• Have students discuss the elements of an argument that they plan on addressing.
• Finally, have students work on writing their papers by writing their introductions with an enticing “grab” or “hook.” If time permits, have students share their work. 
• For Session Five, students should bring in their papers. This session would happen in about a week.

Session Five

• In this session, students will respond each other's drafts using the Peer Response Handout .
• Determine and discuss the final due date with your students. Direct students to Diana Hacker’s MLA site for assistance with their citations if necessary. 
• Remind students that their work will be evaluate using the essay rubric .  They should use the criteria along with the comments from their peer to revise and polish their work.
• During the process of analyzing  Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech , consider showing the related scene from the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age . Though the text of the speech is drastically cut and altered, seeing one filmmaker's vision for the scene may help reinforce the notion of historical context and the importance of audience.
• Allow students to read and/or perform parts of the speeches out loud. Then, they can share some of their thinking about the argumentative structure and rhetorical devices used to make the speech effective. This activity could happen as part of the prewriting process or after essays have been completed.
• Require students to write a graduation speech or a speech on another topic. They can peruse print or online news sources to select a current event that interests them.  Have them choose an audience to whom they would deliver an argumentative speech.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• After peer response has taken place, use the essay rubric to provide feedback on student work. You may change the values of the different categories/requirements to better suit the learning goals for your classroom.
• Calendar Activities
• Lesson Plans
• Student Interactives
• Strategy Guides

Students explore the ways that powerful and passionate words communicate the concepts of freedom, justice, discrimination, and the American Dream in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

While drafting a literary analysis essay (or another type of argument) of their own, students work in pairs to investigate advice for writing conclusions and to analyze conclusions of sample essays. They then draft two conclusions for their essay, select one, and reflect on what they have learned through the process.

Useful for a wide variety of reading and writing activities, this outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information.

This strategy guide clarifies the difference between persuasion and argumentation, stressing the connection between close reading of text to gather evidence and formation of a strong argumentative claim about text.

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Speech Analysis #4: Evaluation Forms, Tools, and Resources

This article provides a speech evaluation form and explains how it supports you in studying and evaluating speeches.

• How to Study and Critique a Speech
• The Art of Delivering Evaluations
• Modified Sandwich Technique for Evaluations
• Evaluation Forms, Tools, and Resources
• Toastmasters Evaluation Contests

Speech Evaluation Form

First things first… download a copy of the free speech evaluation form .

I created this form for use in Toastmasters Evaluation Contests (a topic of a future article here), but I have since used it as a general purpose speech evaluation template.

Why this speech evaluation tool may work for you…

• It is simple — one single-sided page.
• Lots of white space , to facilitate taking notes.
• Flexible . The labels and boxes are not tied to any particular style of speech, e.g. speaking to inform
• Rows recognize the three broad areas to be analyzed: impact, content, and delivery . These are in order of importance from top to bottom.
• The critical nature of the Opening and Closing is recognized with dedicated rows on the form.
• Two columns emphasize the necessity to recognize both the strengths and weaknesses of a speech or speaker.
• Evaluation Opening and Evaluation Summation are for notes which lead to an oral evaluation (e.g. in Toastmasters). They can be ignored if you are analyzing the speech in a different context.

An alternate speech evaluation template…

It is wonderfully simple , consisting of just two rows (Content, Delivery) and three columns (I felt, I saw, I heard). “Content – I Saw” might include things like props or slideware, while “Delivery – I Saw” might cover gestures or facial expressions. This template allowed him to effectively analyze the speech his way.

I strongly encourage you to develop a template that works for you. Maybe the examples here are perfect. Maybe they need a tweak. Maybe you need something entirely different as an aid to capture your thoughts and observations. Whatever the case, an evaluation template can help you.

Critiquing a Speech: Advice from the Blogosphere and Beyond

There’s some great advice elsewhere in the public speaking blogosphere and elsewhere on speech evaluation:

• How to Give a Killer Evaluation : lifehack.org
• Speech Self Critique Guide : Navy Speakers Bureau
• Evaluation Resources from Toastmasters New Zealand Includes “step-by-step approach” to speech evaluation, 10 steps to becoming an evaluation champion.
• Evaluation Template – Wendy Betteridge (PDF)
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Evaluators: Dr. Dilip Abayasekera, former Toastmasters International President

Next in the Speech Analysis Series

The next article in the series is Toastmasters Evaluation Contests .

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• Speech Analysis #3: Modified Sandwich Technique for Evaluations
• Speech Analysis #1: How to Study and Critique a Speech
• Speech Analysis #2: The Art of Delivering Evaluations
• Audience Analysis Worksheet [Free PDF Download]
• Speech Analysis #5: Toastmasters Evaluation Contests
• Speech Preparation #9: Prepare Now for Your Next Speech

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Extremely great helpful tips Andrew

Time and time again I find myself at your site for help on my toastmasters path. Keep up the great work! I really do appreciate the work you do.

Awesome speech evaluation form. I used it at the division level of the evaluation competition and won. I segregated your areas into 3 categories – content, delivery and presence. It made a world of difference.

Thanks for sharing.

found this very helpful in preparation and practice for an english exam, thanks~

this is an excellent evaluation form. It is concise, yet flexible. I will be using it for my Advanced Toastmasters Club. thank you for making this available to others.

Hi Andrew, Your website is very informative and helpful. Just want to let you know the link below in this article does not work. ■Evaluation Template – Wendy Betteridge [PDF] Joshua

Thanks for letting me know, Joshua. I have replaced the link with an alternate resource.

Might you have a copy of the free speech evaluation form found in part 4 in pdf format to forward to me? Somehow, I am unable to download the form.

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Literary Techniques for your Speech, with Examples Analyzed

March 2, 2021 - Dom Barnard

Planned use of language has a major impact on how your speech is received by the audience. Saying the right words at the right time, and in the right way, can achieve a specific impact.

Use language to achieve impact

Careful use of language has produced many powerful speeches over the years. Here are a few literary devices you can employ for your next speech.

Rhetorical Questions

Start your next presentation with an open question. It engages the audience and gets them thinking about your speech early on. Use questions throughout and leave pauses after, letting the audience think about an answer.

Pause at the Right Moment

This adds impact to sentence just before or after the pause. This is a good literary technique to use for the key message of your speech. Don’t be afraid to wait 3-5 seconds before speaking, adding maximum impact to your words.

Messages and words are remembered best in groups of three. The power of three is used in all aspects of speaking in public and by the media. Couple words in groups of three with alliteration for maximum impact, such as “They grew up with a long, lasting, love for each other.”

Repeat the Key Point

A technique used frequently by politicians, a word needs to be said on average 5 times before the audience begins to take in what is being said.

Dramatic Contrast

Contrasting two points, such as “Ten years ago we had a reputation for excellence. Today, we are in danger of losing that reputation.”

For additional literary techniques, check out these links:

• Stylistic Devices (Rhetorical Devices, Figures of Speech)
• BBC Literary Techniques

Spend time planning which of these language techniques you will use in your speech. You can add these in after your first draft of the speech has been written.

Two great speeches analyzed

1. martin luther king – i have a dream, transcript snippet.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

Literary devices and techniques used

Anaphora  – Repetition of the “I have a dream” phrase at the beginning of each sentence.

Metonymy  – The phrase “The let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia… Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee… Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi“, King uses these well-known racist locations to enhance his point.

Hyperbole  – King uses the words ‘all’ and ‘every’ many times, exaggerating his point, “when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city”

Alliteration  – used throughout the speech, alliterations add a poetic quality to the speech, for example this sentence “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Amplification  – King repeats many of his points a second time, with greater emphasis and explanation the second time, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”

Speeches which mastered literary techniques

• Martin Luther King, Jr. – I Have A Dream
• Winston Churchill – We shall fight on the beaches
• John F. Kennedy – Inaugural Address
• Margaret Thatcher – The Lady’s Not For Turning
• Barack Obama – The Audacity Of Hope
• Elizabeth Gilbert – Your Creative Genius
• J. K. Rowling – Harvard Commencement Address

For addition detail on these speeches, check out  this article  on speeches that changed the world.

2. Winston Churchill – We shall fight on the beaches

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end.

We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

And if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Anaphora  – The repetition of the phrase “we shall fight” can be seen in the transcript snippet. This adds dramatic emphases on the words he is saying in these paragraphs.

Alliteration  – Churchill uses repetition of letters to emphasize the dark time Europe was in, “I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts” and “your grisly gang who work your wicked will.”

Antistrophe  – The repetition of words at the end of successive sentences, “the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace“.

Hypophora  – Churchill asks various questions and then answers them himself, “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air” and “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word, it is victory”.

Rule of Three  – Churchill uses this literary technique in many of his speeches, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” and “Never before in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many, to so few”.

Easy to use literary techniques for your next speech

Rhetoric Question

Start your next speech with a rhetoric question – “Who here has used a virtual reality headset?”

Repetition of Phrase

Repeat a key phrase around 5 times throughout the speech, the phrase should be short – “Virtual reality is changing the world”.

Use the Rule of Three

Emphasize a product or service by describing it with three words – “Our software is faster, cheaper and easier to use”. For greatest impact on your audience, combine this with alliteration.

Ask a question then immediately answer it – “How many virtual reality headsets were sold last month? Over 2 million.”

Discourse analysis: speech and writing

Cite this chapter.

• Geoffrey Leech ,
• Margaret Deuchar &
• Robert Hoogenraad  

If you have worked through Part B of this book, you should by now be equipped to analyse the structure of English sentences. In this chapter and the next we aim to demonstrate how this knowledge of grammar can be applied to the analysis of DISCOURSE, or pieces of language which are bigger than a single sentence.

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Leech, G., Deuchar, M., Hoogenraad, R. (1982). Discourse analysis: speech and writing. In: English Grammar for Today. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16878-1_8

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5.2 Three Types of Audience Analysis

Learning objectives.

• Understand how to gather and use demographic information.
• Understand how to gather and use psychographic information.
• Understand how to gather and use situational information.

Thinkmedialabs – Audience – CC BY-NC 2.0.

While audience analysis does not guarantee against errors in judgment, it will help you make good choices in topic, language, style of presentation, and other aspects of your speech. The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve their interests and needs. There are certainly limits to what we can learn through information collection, and we need to acknowledge that before making assumptions, but knowing how to gather and use information through audience analysis is an essential skill for successful speakers.

Demographic Analysis

As indicated earlier, demographic information includes factors such as gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. In your public speaking class, you probably already know how many students are male and female, their approximate ages, and so forth. But how can you assess the demographics of an audience ahead of time if you have had no previous contact with them? In many cases, you can ask the person or organization that has invited you to speak; it’s likely that they can tell you a lot about the demographics of the people who are expected to come to hear you.

Whatever method you use to gather demographics, exercise respect from the outset. For instance, if you are collecting information about whether audience members have ever been divorced, be aware that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You can’t require them to do so, and you may not make assumptions about their reluctance to discuss the topic. You must allow them their privacy.

There are certain things you can learn about an audience based on age. For instance, if your audience members are first-year college students, you can assume that they have grown up in the post-9/11 era and have limited memory of what life was like before the “war on terror.” If your audience includes people in their forties and fifties, it is likely they remember a time when people feared they would contract the AIDS virus from shaking hands or using a public restroom. People who are in their sixties today came of age during the 1960s, the era of the Vietnam War and a time of social confrontation and experimentation. They also have frames of reference that contribute to the way they think, but it may not be easy to predict which side of the issues they support.

Gender can define human experience. Clearly, most women have had a different cultural experience from that of men within the same culture. Some women have found themselves excluded from certain careers. Some men have found themselves blamed for the limitations imposed on women. In books such as You Just Don’t Understand and Talking from 9 to 5 , linguist Deborah Tannen has written extensively on differences between men’s and women’s communication styles. Tannen explains, “This is not to say that all women and all men, or all boys and girls, behave any one way. Many factors influence our styles, including regional and ethnic backgrounds, family experience and individual personality. But gender is a key factor, and understanding its influence can help clarify what happens when we talk” (Tannen, 1994).

Marriage tends to impose additional roles on both men and women and divorce even more so, especially if there are children. Even if your audience consists of young adults who have not yet made occupational or marital commitments, they are still aware that gender and the choices they make about issues such as careers and relationships will influence their experience as adults.

In past generations, Americans often used the metaphor of a “melting pot” to symbolize the assimilation of immigrants from various countries and cultures into a unified, harmonious “American people.” Today, we are aware of the limitations in that metaphor, and have largely replaced it with a multiculturalist view that describes the American fabric as a “patchwork” or a “mosaic.” We know that people who immigrate do not abandon their cultures of origin in order to conform to a standard American identity. In fact, cultural continuity is now viewed as a healthy source of identity.

We also know that subcultures and cocultures exist within and alongside larger cultural groups. For example, while we are aware that Native American people do not all embrace the same values, beliefs, and customs as mainstream white Americans, we also know that members of the Navajo nation have different values, beliefs, and customs from those of members of the Sioux or the Seneca. We know that African American people in urban centers like Detroit and Boston do not share the same cultural experiences as those living in rural Mississippi. Similarly, white Americans in San Francisco may be culturally rooted in the narrative of distant ancestors from Scotland, Italy, or Sweden or in the experience of having emigrated much more recently from Australia, Croatia, or Poland.

Not all cultural membership is visibly obvious. For example, people in German American and Italian American families have widely different sets of values and practices, yet others may not be able to differentiate members of these groups. Differences are what make each group interesting and are important sources of knowledge, perspectives, and creativity.

There is wide variability in religion as well. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a nationwide survey that 84 percent of Americans identify with at least one of a dozen major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and others. Within Christianity alone, there are half a dozen categories including Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and a variety of Protestant denominations. Another 6 percent said they were unaffiliated but religious, meaning that only one American in ten is atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2008).

Even within a given denomination, a great deal of diversity can be found. For instance, among Roman Catholics alone, there are people who are devoutly religious, people who self-identify as Catholic but do not attend mass or engage in other religious practices, and others who faithfully make confession and attend mass but who openly question Papal doctrine on various issues. Catholicism among immigrants from the Caribbean and Brazil is often blended with indigenous religion or with religion imported from the west coast of Africa. It is very different from Catholicism in the Vatican.

The dimensions of diversity in the religion demographic are almost endless, and they are not limited by denomination. Imagine conducting an audience analysis of people belonging to an individual congregation rather than a denomination: even there, you will most likely find a multitude of variations that involve how one was brought up, adoption of a faith system as an adult, how strictly one observes religious practices, and so on.

Yet, even with these multiple facets, religion is still a meaningful demographic lens. It can be an indicator of probable patterns in family relationships, family size, and moral attitudes.

Group Membership

In your classroom audience alone, there will be students from a variety of academic majors. Every major has its own set of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics. A political science student preparing for law school might seem to have little in common with a student of music therapy, for instance. In addition, there are other group memberships that influence how audience members understand the world. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteerism, and cultural communities all provide people with ways of understanding the world as it is and as we think it should be.

Because public speaking audiences are very often members of one group or another, group membership is a useful and often easy to access facet of audience analysis. The more you know about the associations of your audience members, the better prepared you will be to tailor your speech to their interests, expectations, and needs.

Education is expensive, and people pursue education for many reasons. Some people seek to become educated, while others seek to earn professional credentials. Both are important motivations. If you know the education levels attained by members of your audience, you might not know their motivations, but you will know to what extent they could somehow afford the money for an education, afford the time to get an education, and survive educational demands successfully.

The kind of education is also important. For instance, an airplane mechanic undergoes a very different kind of education and training from that of an accountant or a software engineer. This means that not only the attained level of education but also the particular field is important in your understanding of your audience.

People choose occupations for reasons of motivation and interest, but their occupations also influence their perceptions and their interests. There are many misconceptions about most occupations. For instance, many people believe that teachers work an eight-hour day and have summers off. When you ask teachers, however, you might be surprised to find out that they take work home with them for evenings and weekends, and during the summer, they may teach summer school as well as taking courses in order to keep up with new developments in their fields. But even if you don’t know those things, you would still know that teachers have had rigorous generalized and specialized qualifying education, that they have a complex set of responsibilities in the classroom and the institution, and that, to some extent, they have chosen a relatively low-paying occupation over such fields as law, advertising, media, fine and performing arts, or medicine. If your audience includes doctors and nurses, you know that you are speaking to people with differing but important philosophies of health and illness. Learning about those occupational realities is important in avoiding wrong assumptions and stereotypes. We insist that you not assume that nurses are merely doctors “lite.” Their skills, concerns, and responsibilities are almost entirely different, and both are crucially necessary to effective health care.

Psychographic Analysis

Earlier, we mentioned psychographic information, which includes such things as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. Authors Grice and Skinner present a model in which values are the basis for beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Grice & Skinner, 2009). Values are the foundation of their pyramid model. They say, “A value expresses a judgment of what is desirable and undesirable, right and wrong, or good and evil. Values are usually stated in the form of a word or phrase. For example, most of us probably share the values of equality, freedom, honesty, fairness, justice, good health, and family. These values compose the principles or standards we use to judge and develop our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.”

It is important to recognize that, while demographic information as discussed in Section 5.2.1 “Demographic Analysis” is fairly straightforward and verifiable, psychographic information is much less clear-cut. Two different people who both say they believe in equal educational opportunity may have very different interpretations of what “equal opportunity” means. People who say they don’t buy junk food may have very different standards for what specific kinds of foods are considered “junk food.”

We also acknowledge that people inherit some values from their family upbringing, cultural influences, and life experiences. The extent to which someone values family loyalty and obedience to parents, thrift, humility, and work may be determined by these influences more than by individual choice.

Psychographic analysis can reveal preexisting notions that limit your audience’s frame of reference. By knowing about such notions ahead of time, you can address them in your speech. Audiences are likely to have two basic kinds of preexisting notions: those about the topic and those about the speaker.

Preexisting Notions about Your Topic

Many things are a great deal more complex than we realize. Media stereotypes often contribute to our oversimplifications. For instance, one of your authors, teaching public speaking in the past decade, was surprised to hear a student claim that “the hippies meant well, but they did it wrong.” Aside from the question of the “it” that was done wrong, there was a question about how little the student actually knew about the diverse hippy cultures and their aspirations. The student seemed unaware that some of “the hippies” were the forebears of such things as organic bakeries, natural food co-ops, urban gardens, recycling, alternative energy, wellness, and other arguably positive developments.

It’s important to know your audience in order to make a rational judgment about how their views of your topic might be shaped. In speaking to an audience that might have differing definitions, you should take care to define your terms in a clear, honest way.

At the opposite end from oversimplification is the level of sophistication your audience might embody. Your audience analysis should include factors that reveal it. Suppose you are speaking about trends in civil rights in the United States. You cannot pretend that advancement of civil rights is virtually complete nor can you claim that no progress has been made. It is likely that in a college classroom, the audience will know that although much progress has been made, there are still pockets of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. When you speak to an audience that is cognitively complex, your strategy must be different from one you would use for an audience that is less educated in the topic. With a cognitively complex audience, you must acknowledge the overall complexity while stating that your focus will be on only one dimension. With an audience that’s uninformed about your topic, that strategy in a persuasive speech could confuse them; they might well prefer a black-and-white message with no gray areas. You must decide whether it is ethical to represent your topic this way.

When you prepare to do your audience analysis, include questions that reveal how much your audience already knows about your topic. Try to ascertain the existence of stereotyped, oversimplified, or prejudiced attitudes about it. This could make a difference in your choice of topic or in your approach to the audience and topic.

Preexisting Notions about You

People form opinions readily. For instance, we know that students form impressions of teachers the moment they walk into our classrooms on the first day. You get an immediate impression of our age, competence, and attitude simply from our appearance and nonverbal behavior. In addition, many have heard other students say what they think of us.

The same is almost certainly true of you. But it’s not always easy to get others to be honest about their impressions of you. They’re likely to tell you what they think you want to hear. Sometimes, however, you do know what others think. They might think of you as a jock, a suit-wearing conservative, a nature lover, and so on. Based on these impressions, your audience might expect a boring speech, a shallow speech, a sermon, and so on. However, your concern should still be serving your audience’s needs and interests, not debunking their opinions of you or managing your image. In order to help them be receptive, you address their interests directly, and make sure they get an interesting, ethical speech.

Situational Analysis

The next type of analysis is called the situational audience analysis because it focuses on characteristics related to the specific speaking situation. The situational audience analysis can be divided into two main questions:

• How many people came to hear my speech and why are they here? What events, concerns, and needs motivated them to come? What is their interest level, and what else might be competing for their attention?
• What is the physical environment of the speaking situation? What is the size of the audience, layout of the room, existence of a podium or a microphone, and availability of digital media for visual aids? Are there any distractions, such as traffic noise?

Audience Size

In a typical class, your audience is likely to consist of twenty to thirty listeners. This audience size gives you the latitude to be relatively informal within the bounds of good judgment. It isn’t too difficult to let each audience member feel as though you’re speaking to him or her. However, you would not become so informal that you allow your carefully prepared speech to lapse into shallow entertainment. With larger audiences, it’s more difficult to reach out to each listener, and your speech will tend to be more formal, staying more strictly within its careful outline. You will have to work harder to prepare visual and audio material that reaches the people sitting at the back of the room, including possibly using amplification.

There are many occasions for speeches. Awards ceremonies, conventions and conferences, holidays, and other celebrations are some examples. However, there are also less joyful reasons for a speech, such as funerals, disasters, and the delivery of bad news. As always, there are likely to be mixed reactions. For instance, award ceremonies are good for community and institutional morale, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find at least a little resentment from listeners who feel deserving but were overlooked. Likewise, for a speech announcing bad news, it is likely that at least a few listeners will be glad the bad news wasn’t even worse. If your speech is to deliver bad news, it’s important to be honest but also to avoid traumatizing your audience. For instance, if you are a condominium board member speaking to a residents’ meeting after the building was damaged by a hurricane, you will need to provide accurate data about the extent of the damage and the anticipated cost and time required for repairs. At the same time, it would be needlessly upsetting to launch into a graphic description of injuries suffered by people, animals, and property in neighboring areas not connected to your condomium complex.

Some of the most successful speeches benefit from situational analysis to identify audience concerns related to the occasion. For example, when the president of the United States gives the annual State of the Union address, the occasion calls for commenting on the condition of the nation and outlining the legislative agenda for the coming year. The speech could be a formality that would interest only “policy wonks,” or with the use of good situational audience analysis, it could be a popular event reinforcing the connection between the president and the American people. In January 2011, knowing that the United States’ economy was slowly recovering and that jobless rates were still very high, President Barack Obama and his staff knew that the focus of the speech had to be on jobs. Similarly, in January 2003, President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech focused on the “war on terror” and his reasons for justifying the invasion of Iraq. If you look at the history of State of the Union Addresses, you’ll often find that the speeches are tailored to the political, social, and economic situations facing the United States at those times.

Voluntariness of Audience

A voluntary audience gathers because they want to hear the speech, attend the event, or participate in an event. A classroom audience, in contrast, is likely to be a captive audience. Captive audiences are required to be present or feel obligated to do so. Given the limited choices perceived, a captive audience might give only grudging attention. Even when there’s an element of choice, the likely consequences of nonattendance will keep audience members from leaving. The audience’s relative perception of choice increases the importance of holding their interest.

Whether or not the audience members chose to be present, you want them to be interested in what you have to say. Almost any audience will be interested in a topic that pertains directly to them. However, your audience might also be receptive to topics that are indirectly or potentially pertinent to their lives. This means that if you choose a topic such as advances in the treatment of spinal cord injury or advances in green technology, you should do your best to show how these topics are potentially relevant to their lives or careers.

However, there are some topics that appeal to audience curiosity even when it seems there’s little chance of direct pertinence. For instance, topics such as Blackbeard the pirate or ceremonial tattoos among the Maori might pique the interests of various audiences. Depending on the instructions you get from your instructor, you can consider building an interesting message about something outside the daily foci of our attention.

Physical Setting

The physical setting can make or break even the best speeches, so it is important to exercise as much control as you can over it. In your classroom, conditions might not be ideal, but at least the setting is familiar. Still, you know your classroom from the perspective of an audience member, not a speaker standing in the front—which is why you should seek out any opporutunity to rehearse your speech during a minute when the room is empty. If you will be giving your presentation somewhere else, it is a good idea to visit the venue ahead of time if at all possible and make note of any factors that will affect how you present your speech. In any case, be sure to arrive well in advance of your speaking time so that you will have time to check that the microphone works, to test out any visual aids, and to request any needed adjustments in lighting, room ventilation, or other factors to eliminate distractions and make your audience more comfortable.

Key Takeaways

• Demographic audience analysis focuses on group memberships of audience members.
• Another element of audience is psychographic information, which focuses on audience attitudes, beliefs, and values.
• Situational analysis of the occasion, physical setting, and other factors are also critical to effective audience analysis.
• List the voluntary (political party, campus organization, etc.) and involuntary (age, race, sex, etc.) groups to which you belong. After each group, write a sentence or phrase about how that group influences your experience as a student.
• Visit http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp and http://homes.point2.com and report on the demographic information found for several different towns or zip codes. How would this information be useful in preparing an audience analysis?
• In a short paragraph, define the term “fairness.” Compare your definition with someone else’s definition. What factors do you think contributed to differences in definition?
• With a partner, identify an instance when you observed a speaker give a poor speech due to failing to analyze the situation. What steps could the speaker have taken to more effectively analyze the situation?

Grice, G. L., & Skinner, J. F. (2009). Mastering public speaking: The handbook (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. (2008, February). Summary of key findings. In U.S. religious landscape survey . Retrieved from http://religions.pewforum.org/reports#

Tannen, D. (1994, December 11). The talk of the sandbox: How Johnny and Suzy’s playground chatter prepares them for life at the office. The Washington Post . Retrieved from http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/sandbox.htm

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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My Favorite Speeches for Rhetorical Analysis: 10 Speeches for Middle School ELA and High School English

Teaching rhetorical analysis is one of my absolute favorite units to complete with my students. I love teaching my students about rhetorical strategies and devices, analyzing what makes an effective and persuasive argument, and reading critical speeches with my students. Here is a quick list of some of my favorite speeches for rhetorical analysis.

I absolutely LOVE teaching rhetorical analysis. I think it might be one of my favorite units to teach to my high school students. There are just so many different text options to choose from. Here is a list of some of my favorite speeches to include in my rhetorical analysis teaching unit.

10 Speeches for Teaching Rhetorical Analysis

1. the gettysburg address (abraham lincoln).

Some notable things to mention in this speech include allusion and parallel structure. To make your analysis more meaningful, point out these devices to students and explain how these devices enhance the meaning of the text.

Teaching Resource : The Gettysburg Address Rhetorical Analysis Activity Packet

2. Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech (Lou Gehrig)

This speech is one that many of my athletes love to analyze, and it is an excellent exemplar text to teach pathos. And like The Gettysburg Address, it is short. This is another speech that you can read, analyze, and even write about in one class period.

When I use this speech in my class, I have students look for examples of pathos. Mainly, I have them look at word choice, tone, and mood. How does Lou Gehrig’s choice of words affect his tone and the overall mood of the speech?

3. I Have a Dream (Martin Luther King,  Jr.)

In the classroom, it is important to point out the sermonic feel to the speech and also to have your students look for calls to action and pathos. Have your students look for tone, allusions, and word choice to help them notice these rhetoric expressions throughout it.

Teaching Resource : I Have a Dream Close Read and Rhetorical Analysis

4. Speech at the March on Washington (Josephine Baker)

This is another important speech that held a lot of importance for the changes that needed to be made in America. The speech is a shorter one, so in the classroom, it will not take as long to analyze it, and students can understand the significance of the use of rhetoric in a shorter amount of time than some other speeches.

When teaching this speech, I like to remind my students to search for devices that portray an excellent example of the pathos that is so present in this speech. Some of these devices could be mood, repetition, and diction.

5. Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech (Steve Jobs)

In class, it is good to have your students annotate and analyze the speech just as they have done for the others. The organization of the speech will help them to notice the similarities and differences between each point Jobs makes.

6. Space Shuttle Challenger (Ronald Reagan)

This speech represents a strong sense of pathos as a movement to help the American people cope with loss after the deaths of the astronauts aboard the Challenger. It is another speech that is not too long, so it should not take a long time to both analyze and annotate the entire speech.

When teaching this speech in class, be sure to mention how pathos is the driving force behind the speech, through the tone and the diction. How does Reagan use emotion to focus on the astronauts as humans, rather than solely focusing on the tragedy?

7. The Perils of Indifference (Elie Wiesel)

This speech is a good one to teach because it both makes students question their own lives, but also how the world works. The speech relies on pathos, and a little ethos too, to get the audience to feel the full effect of the tragedy of the Holocaust and what the speaker went through. It is a long speech so it may take longer for the students to fully grasp all the details that make it such a persuasive speech.

When I teach this speech, I like to have students annotate every place they notice an example of pathos, and then have them explain why in their annotations this makes them feel an emotion. The same with the ethos, and then we can further analyze the rest together.

8. 9/11 Address to the Nation (George W. Bush)

This speech shows another example of the use of pathos in the midst of a tragedy. The President wanted to show the American people how much he was feeling for those lost in the tragedy of 9/11. It is not a long speech, but the amount of emotion within the words is significant for students to notice.

When teaching this speech, it is essential that students look very closely at each part of it, noticing each piece that reveals tone, mood, and other literary devices. How do the different devices add to the pathos of the speech?

FREE TEACHING ACTIVITY : September 11 Address to the Nation Sampler

Teaching Resource : September 11 Address to the Nation Rhetorical Analysis Unit

9. We are Virginia Tech (Nikki Giovanni)

This speech is probably the shortest speech on this list but provides one of the most emotional and pathos-filled rhetoric. This describes another tragedy that is spoken about with pathos to give the audience a safe feeling after such an emotional thing. Students can spend time analyzing the different devices that make the piece so strong in its emotion.

In the classroom, make sure your students make a note of the repetition, and what that does for the speech. Does it make the emotion more impactful? How does it make the audience feel like they are a part of something bigger?

10. Woman’s Right to the Suffrage (Susan B. Anthony)

This is another short speech that holds a lot of power within it. A lot of students will enjoy reading this to see how much the country has changed, and how this speech may have some part in influencing this change. It is a great speech to help teach logos in the classroom, and it will not take a long time to analyze.

Make sure your students notice, and they also understand, the use of allusions within the speech. These allusions help to establish the use of logos, as Anthony wants the use of American historical documents to show how logical her argument is.

Ready-For-You Rhetorical Analysis Teaching Unit

You might also be interested in my blog post about 15 rhetorical analysis questions to ask your students.

Teaching rhetorical analysis and speeches in the classroom is a great way to teach informational text reading standards.

Rhetorical Analysis Teaching Resources:

These resources follow reading standards for informational text and are ideal for secondary ELA teachers.

• Rhetorical Analysis Unit with Sticky Notes
• Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Understanding Rhetorical Appeals\
• Rhetorical Analysis Mini Flip Book

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• Basic Text Statistics
• Common Words and Phrases
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• Passive Voice

Speech analysis

Eine speech analysis ist eine Redeanalyse in Englisch. Hier findest du hilfreiche Tipps zum Aufbau und zum Inhalt deiner speech analysis .

Du willst dir schnell einen Überblick über das Thema verschaffen? Dann schau dir gleich unser Video an!

Was ist eine speech analysis?

How to analyse a speech, tipps und tricks , linking words.

Eine  speech analysis  ist eine besondere Form der Analyse in Englisch , bei der du verschiedene Aspekte einer Rede untersuchst. Meist handelt es sich dabei um eine politische Rede . Eine sogenannte  political speech  wird zu verschiedenen Anlässen (occasions) gehalten. Dazu gehören zum Beispiel:

• Wahlkämpfe (election campaigns)
• Ansprachen in Krisenzeiten (addresses in times of crisis)
• Gedenkfeiern (commemorations)
• Gipfeltreffen (summit meetings)
• Amtseintritte (inaugural addresses)

Unabhängig vom Anlass ist das Ziel  einer political speech in der Regel gleich: Der Redner will das Publikum darin von seiner Einstellung überzeugen und zu einem bestimmten Handeln auffordern.

Um die gewünschte Wirkung zu erzielen, halten sich politische Reden an einen klaren Aufbau aus Einleitung , Hauptteil und Schluss .

In deiner speech analysis arbeitest du heraus, wie der Redner in diesen drei Teilen an sein Publikum appelliert . Das heißt, du untersuchst, mit welchen sprachlichen Mitteln er seine Zuhörer anspricht und überzeugen möchte. 

Speech analysis – Vorbereitung

Um eine Rede in Englisch richtig zu analysieren, solltest du dich zuerst mit den wichtigen Informationen zur Rede beschäftigen. Dafür liest du dir die Rede aufmerksam durch. Dadurch kannst du Fragen zu der Rede, also der Redesituation (context)  beantworten. Dazu gehören: 

• speaker – Wer ist der Redner ?
• occasion – Was ist der Anlass ?
• time and place – Wie ist der Kontext ?
• (target) audience – Wer ist das (Ziel-) Publikum ?

Häufig geben dir diese Informationen bereits einen ersten Eindruck vom Thema und vom Ziel der Rede.

Speech analysis – Einleitung

In der Einleitung (introduction) deiner speech analysis benennst du die Redesituation und das Thema der Rede. Dafür erklärst du, mit welchem Problem oder mit welcher Frage sich die Rede hauptsächlich beschäftigt. Einen Hinweis darauf liefert dir in der Regel der Titel . Aber auch Schlüsselwörter und Wiederholungen geben darüber Aufschluss. 

Wenn du dir über das Thema im Klaren bist, schreibst du deinen Einleitungssatz. Der könnte zum Beispiel so aussehen: 

Speech analysis  – Beispiel: In his “ Victory Speech , “ given  on election night on 6 November 2012 in Washington, D.C. , Barack Obama addresses  the American people with one important message : They need to move forward!

Die englische Übersetzung von „eine Rede halten“ lautet to give a speech und nicht to hold a speech !

Speech analysis – Hauptteil

Der Hauptteil einer Rede in Englisch wird als argumentation bezeichnet. Darin beschäftigt sich der Redner (speaker)  ausführlich mit dem Thema seiner Rede.

Im Hauptteil (body) deiner speech analysis untersuchst du, wie der Redner dabei vorgeht. Dafür fasst du zunächst den Inhalt der Rede in einer kurzen Summary  zusammen. Danach untersuchst du die  Argumentationsstruktur und die  Sprache  der Rede. Außerdem machst du deutlich, wie der Redner  Kontakt zu seinem Publikum herstellt. 

Argumentationsstruktur

Indem du die Argumentationsstruktur der Rede analysierst, kannst du die Intention, also die Absicht des Redners, herausarbeiten. Dabei untersuchst du, wie er seine Argumente präsentiert. An seiner These (thesis) und seinen Argumenten (arguments) kannst du zum Beispiel ablesen, ob

• der Redner seine Beliebtheit steigern möchte,
• er über etwas aufklären möchte, 
• er seriös – also mit von Fakten und Expertenmeinungen – argumentiert 
• oder ob er unseriös – also mit Gefühlen und Vorurteilen – argumentiert. 

Sprachliche Analyse 

Noch wichtiger als die Argumentationsstruktur ist die Sprache , die ein Redner in seiner speech verwendet. Die sprachliche Gestaltung in einer politischen Rede ist häufig sehr subjektiv und anschaulich. Das erreicht ein Redner durch rhetorische Mittel  wie Metaphern (metaphors) , Vergleiche (comparisons) oder Wiederholungen (repetitions) . 

Speech analysis – Beispiel:   Using the climax “ to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting, “  Obama emphasises the American Dream.

Es spielt auch eine Rolle, ob der Redner formelle   Sprache   (formal language) oder eher Umgangssprache   (colloquial language) verwendet. Dadurch kann er sich seinem Publikum gezielt anpassen.  

Wenn du die Möglichkeit hast, solltest du dir zusätzlich eine Videoübertragung der Rede ansehen. Dadurch kannst du auch den Tonfall (intonation) und die Betonung (stress) des Redners in deine speech analysis miteinbeziehen. Dasselbe gilt für seine Gestik (gestures) und Mimik (facial expression) .

Kontakt zum Publikum

In einer politischen Rede versucht der Redner meist, das Publikum direkt anzusprechen. Dafür benutzt er Personalpronomen   wie we und us (inclusive pronouns). So stellt er einen engen Kontakt zum Publikum her und gewinnt Einfluss auf seine Zuhörer. 

Speech analysis – Beispiel:   In his speech, Obama uses a lot of inclusive pronouns. For example, when he says: “ … we  know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come. “

Speech analysis – Schluss 

Im Schluss fasst du die wichtigsten Ergebnisse deiner speech analysis knapp zusammen. In einem Fazit hebst du anschließend die Intention des Redners hervor. Du hältst also fest, was die Absicht des Redners ist und ob seine Rede die gewünschte Wirkung erzielt.

Speech analysis – Beispiel:   By describing a hopeful future for the United States, Obama creates confidence in the minds of the American people and encourages them to work hard to achieve their dreams. 

Um deine Redeanalyse in Englisch noch besser zu machen, kannst du die vorliegende Rede auch auf bestimmte Methoden  der Beeinflussung untersuchen. Diese verwenden Redner gezielt, um auf ihr Publikum einzuwirken.

• Um seine eigene Position aufzuwerten , stellt der Redner seine Meinung als den Standpunkt einer ganzen Gesellschaft dar. Dadurch erzeugt er ein Wir-Gefühl unter seinen Zuhörern. 
• Ein Redner kann seine eigene Position auch aufwerten, indem er einen gegnerischen Standpunkt abwertet . Dabei weist er auf Fehler oder Unstimmigkeiten in der Argumentation eines Gegners hin. 
• Indem der Redner einen Aspekt dramatisiert , beeinflusst er die Gefühle seines Publikums. So kann er Ängste schüren und dadurch seine Zuhörer zum Handeln aufrufen.
• Umgekehrt kann der Redner sein Publikum aber auch beschwichtigen . Dafür fokussiert er Erfolge und schwächt Misserfolge ab.

Um deine Analyseteile sinnvoll miteinander zu verbinden, verwendest du am besten linking words . Schau dir gleich unser Video dazu an!

Beliebte Inhalte aus dem Bereich Textarten Englisch

• Englisch Brief schreiben Dauer: 04:08
• Letter to the editor Dauer: 03:53
• Letter of application Dauer: 04:41

Weitere Inhalte: Textarten Englisch

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Read a transcript of Harrison Butker's controversial commencement speech in full

Harrison Butker's 2024 commencement speech at Benedictine College has set off a cascade of reactions , with some commentators calling the Kansas City Chiefs kicker's words " misogynistic ."

What, exactly, did Butker say in the polarizing speech delivered before the Catholic liberal arts college's graduating class in Atchison, Kansas on May 11?

During the 20-minute speech, Butker, who is Catholic himself, said he intended to say the "difficult stuff out loud." In his own words, he has "gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind."

In one particularly scrutinized segment, Butker addressed "the women" graduates directly in an attempt to counter the "most diabolical lies" they have been told. More than professional achievements, he said they should be excited to take on the "vocation" of homemaker, using his own wife, Isabelle Butker, as an example.

He shared that his wife’s life “really started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother," and later said, "Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, ‘Heck, no.’"

He urged the men in the graduating class to be "unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men."

The wide-ranging speech also touched on pride, birth control, COVID restrictions, "dangerous gender ideologies" and Catholic principles.

Butker described Catholic pride as "not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but true God-centered pride," an apparent dig at Pride Month.

On the topic of birth control, he said, "There is nothing good about playing God with having children — whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive." He called out abortion, IVF and surrogacy as symptoms of "disorder."

Other parts of the speech were specific to the Catholic church, including his “love” for traditional Latin mass and the state of the priesthood: “Sadly, many priests we are looking to for leadership are the same ones who prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs and matching outfits for the parish directory."

Commenting on life after the "Benedictine bubble," he prepared graduates for what might come next in what he described as a departure from Catholic principles: "Sadly, I’m sure many of you know the countless stories of good and active members of this community who, after graduation and moving away from the Benedictine bubble, have ended up moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend prior to marriage. Some even leave the Church and abandon God. It is always heartbreaking to hear these stories, and there is a desire to know what happened and what went wrong."

Seeming to acknowledge the political nature of his speech, Butker said near the end, "I know that my message today had a little less fluff than is expected for these speeches, but I believe that this audience and this venue is the best place to speak openly and honestly about who we are and where we all want to go, which is Heaven."

Responses to the speech have been split. It generated applause from the in-person audience, including after the segment about women in the home. But it has largely received fierce backlash online.

Nuns associated with the college said in a statement his speech did not represent the school or its founders' vision , saying: "Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division."

The NFL said in its statement that "his views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Butker has not publicly commented on the backlash.

Read a transcript of Harrison Butker's full commencement speech at Benedictine College

Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2024, I would like to start off by congratulating all of you for successfully making it to this achievement today. I’m sure your high school graduation was not what you had imagined, and most likely, neither was your first couple years of college.

By making it to this moment through all the adversity thrown your way from COVID, I hope you learned the important lessons that suffering in this life is only temporary. As a group, you witnessed firsthand how bad leaders who don’t stay in their lane can have a negative impact on society. It is through this lens that I want to take stock of how we got to where we are, and where we want to go as citizens and, yes, as Catholics. One last thing before I begin, I want to be sure to thank President Minnis and the board for their invitation to speak.

When President Minnis first reached out a couple of months ago, I had originally said, 'No. You see, last year I gave the commencement address at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, and I felt that one graduation speech was more than enough, especially for someone who isn’t a professional speaker. But of course, President Minnis used his gift of persuasion and spoke to the many challenges you all faced throughout the COVID fiasco, and how you missed out on so many milestones the rest of us older people have taken for granted. While COVID might have played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique. Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.

Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.

He is not alone. From the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common. They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it.

These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up. You know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to stop pretending that the 'church of nice' is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity, but never mistake charity for cowardice.

It is safe to say that over the past few years, I have gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind. I never envisioned myself, nor wanted, to have this sort of a platform, but God has given it to me, so I have no other choice but to embrace it and preach more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it.

As members of the church founded by Jesus Christ, it is our duty and ultimately privilege to be authentically and unapologetically Catholic. Don’t be mistaken, even within the Church, people in polite Catholic circles will try to persuade you to remain silent. There even was an award-winning film called 'Silence', made by a fellow Catholic, wherein one of the main characters, a Jesuit priest, abandoned the Church, and as an apostate, when he died is seen grasping a crucifix, quiet and unknown to anyone but God. As a friend of Benedictine College, His Excellency Bishop Robert Barron, said in his review of the film, it was exactly what the cultural elite want to see in Christianity — private, hidden away, and harmless.

Our Catholic faith has always been countercultural. Our Lord, along with countless followers, were all put to death for their adherence to her teachings. The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We fear speaking truth, because now, unfortunately, truth is in the minority. Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.

But make no mistake, before we even attempt to fix any of the issues plaguing society, we must first get our own house in order, and it starts with our leaders. The bishops and priests appointed by God as our spiritual fathers must be rightly ordered. There is not enough time today for me to list all the stories of priests and bishops misleading their flocks, but none of us can blame ignorance anymore and just blindly proclaim that, 'That’s what Father said.' Because sadly, many priests we are looking to for leadership are the same ones who prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs and matching outfits for the parish directory.

It’s easy for us laymen and women to think that in order for us to be holy, that we must be active in our parish and try to fix it. Yes, we absolutely should be involved in supporting our parishes, but we cannot be the source for our parish priests to lean on to help with their problems. Just as we look at the relationship between a father and his son, so too should we look at the relationship between a priest and his people. It would not be appropriate for me to always be looking to my son for help when it is my job as his father to lead him.

St. Josemaría Escrivá states that priests are ordained to serve, and should not yield to temptation to imitate laypeople, but to be priests through and through. Tragically, so many priests revolve much of their happiness from the adulation they receive from their parishioners, and in searching for this, they let their guard down and become overly familiar. This undue familiarity will prove to be problematic every time, because as my teammate’s girlfriend says, 'Familiarity breeds contempt.'

Saint Josemaría continues that some want to see the priest as just another man. That is not so. They want to find in the priest those virtues proper to every Christian, and indeed every honorable man: understanding, justice, a life of work — priestly work, in this instance — and good manners. It is not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians so that we can decipher this or that theological teaching — unless, of course, you are a theology major. We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation. And for most of us, that’s as married men and women. Still, we have so many great resources at our fingertips that it doesn’t take long to find traditional and timeless teachings that haven’t been ambiguously reworded for our times. Plus, there are still many good and holy priests, and it’s up to us to seek them out.

The chaos of the world is unfortunately reflected in the chaos in our parishes, and sadly, in our cathedrals too. As we saw during the pandemic, too many bishops were not leaders at all. They were motivated by fear, fear of being sued, fear of being removed, fear of being disliked. They showed by their actions, intentional or unintentional, that the sacraments don’t actually matter. Because of this, countless people died alone, without access to the sacraments, and it’s a tragedy we must never forget. As Catholics, we can look to so many examples of heroic shepherds who gave their lives for their people, and ultimately, the Church. We cannot buy into the lie that the things we experienced during COVID were appropriate. Over the centuries, there have been great wars, great famines, and yes, even great diseases, all that came with a level of lethality and danger. But in each of those examples, Church leaders leaned into their vocations and ensured that their people received the sacraments.

Great saints like St. Damien of Molokai, who knew the dangers of his ministry, stayed for 11 years as a spiritual leader to the leper colonies of Hawaii. His heroism is looked at today as something set apart and unique, when ideally it should not be unique at all. For as a father loves his child, so a shepherd should love his spiritual children, too.

That goes even more so for our bishops, these men who are present-day apostles. Our bishops once had adoring crowds of people kissing their rings and taking in their every word, but now relegate themselves to a position of inconsequential existence. Now, when a bishop of a diocese or the bishop’s conference as a whole puts out an important document on this matter or that, nobody even takes a moment to read it, let alone follow it.

No. Today, our shepherds are far more concerned with keeping the doors open to the chancery than they are with saying the difficult stuff out loud. It seems that the only time you hear from your bishops is when it’s time for the annual appeal, whereas we need our bishops to be vocal about the teachings of the Church, setting aside their own personal comfort and embracing their cross. Our bishops are not politicians but shepherds, so instead of fitting in the world by going along to get along, they too need to stay in their lane and lead.

I say all of this not from a place of anger, as we get the leaders we deserve. But this does make me reflect on staying in my lane and focusing on my own vocation and how I can be a better father and husband and live in the world but not be of it. Focusing on my vocation while praying and fasting for these men will do more for the Church than me complaining about her leaders.

Because there seems to be so much confusion coming from our leaders, there needs to be concrete examples for people to look to in places like Benedictine, a little Kansas college built high on a bluff above the Missouri River, are showing the world how an ordered, Christ-centered existence is the recipe for success. You need to look no further than the examples all around this campus, where over the past 20 years, enrollment has doubled, construction and revitalization are a constant part of life, and people, the students, the faculty and staff, are thriving. This didn’t happen by chance. In a deliberate movement to embrace traditional Catholic values, Benedictine has gone from just another liberal arts school with nothing to set it apart to a thriving beacon of light and a reminder to us all that when you embrace tradition, success — worldly and spiritual — will follow.

I am certain the reporters at the AP could not have imagined that their attempt to rebuke and embarrass places and people like those here at Benedictine wouldn’t be met with anger, but instead met with excitement and pride. Not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify him. Reading that article now shared all over the world, we see that in the complete surrender of self and a turning towards Christ, you will find happiness. Right here in a little town in Kansas, we find many inspiring laypeople using their talents.

President Minnis, Dr. (Andrew) Swafford, and Dr. (Jared) Zimmerer are a few great examples right here on this very campus that will keep the light of Christ burning bright for generations to come. Being locked in with your vocation and staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life.

It is essential that we focus on our own state in life, whether that be as a layperson, a priest, or religious. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2024, you are sitting at the edge of the rest of your lives. Each of you has the potential to leave a legacy that transcends yourselves and this era of human existence. In the small ways, by living out your vocation, you will ensure that God’s Church continues and the world is enlightened by your example.

For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.

She's the primary educator to our children. She is the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation.

I say all of this to you because I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life. Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, 'Heck, no.'

As a man who gets a lot of praise and has been given a platform to speak to audiences like this one today, I pray that I always use my voice for God and not for myself. Everything I am saying to you is not from a place of wisdom, but rather a place of experience. I am hopeful that these words will be seen as those from a man, not much older than you, who feels it is imperative that this class, this generation, and this time in our society must stop pretending that the things we see around us are normal.

Heterodox ideas abound even within Catholic circles. But let’s be honest, there is nothing good about playing God with having children — whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive. No matter how you spin it, there is nothing natural about Catholic birth control.

It is only in the past few years that I have grown encouraged to speak more boldly and directly because, as I mentioned earlier, I have leaned into my vocation as a husband and father, and as a man.

To the gentlemen here today: Part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the U.S., and a correlation could be made in their drastically lower violence rates, as well.

Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy, but if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree.

The road ahead is bright. Things are changing. Society is shifting. And people, young and old, are embracing tradition. Not only has it been my vocation that has helped me and those closest to me, but not surprising to many of you, should be my outspoken embrace of the traditional Latin Mass. I’ve been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience, but for most people I have come across within these communities this simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I am better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend the TLM because I believe, just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular in how he wanted to be worshipped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order, and began to pursue it in my own life. Aside from the TLM itself, too many of our sacred traditions have been relegated to things of the past, when in my parish, things such as ember days, days when we fast and pray for vocations and for our priests, are still adhered to. The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available.

A lot of people have complaints about the parish or the community, but we should not sacrifice the Mass for community. I prioritize the TLM even if the parish isn’t beautiful, the priest isn’t great, or the community isn’t amazing. I still go to the TLM because I believe the holy sacrifice of the Mass is more important than anything else. I say this knowing full well that when each of you rekindle your knowledge and adherence to many of the church’s greatest traditions, you will see how much more colorful and alive your life can and should be.

As you move on from this place and enter into the world, know that you will face many challenges. Sadly, I’m sure many of you know the countless stories of good and active members of this community who, after graduation and moving away from the Benedictine bubble, have ended up moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend prior to marriage. Some even leave the Church and abandon God. It is always heartbreaking to hear these stories, and there is a desire to know what happened and what went wrong.

What you must remember is that life is about doing the small things well, setting yourself up for success, and surrounding yourself with people who continually push you to be the best version of you. I say this all the time, that iron sharpens iron. It’s a great reminder that those closest to us should be making us better. If you are dating someone who doesn’t even share your faith, how do you expect that person to help you become a saint? If your friend group is filled with people who only think about what you’re doing next weekend and are not willing to have those difficult conversations, how can they help sharpen you?

As you prepare to enter into the workforce, it is extremely important that you actually think about the places you are moving to. Who is the bishop? What kind of parishes are there? Do they offer the TLM and have priests who embrace their priestly vocation? Cost of living must not be the only arbiter of your choices, for a life without God is not a life at all, and the cost of salvation is worth more than any career.

I’m excited for the future, and I pray that something I have said will resonate as you move on to the next chapter of your life.

Never be afraid to profess the one holy, Catholic, and apostolic church, for this is the church that Jesus Christ established, through which we receive sanctifying grace.

I know that my message today had a little less fluff than is expected for these speeches, but I believe that this audience and this venue is the best place to speak openly and honestly about who we are and where we all want to go, which is Heaven.

I thank God for Benedictine College and for the example it provides to the world. I thank God for men like President Minnis, who are doing their part for the Kingdom. Come to find out, you can have an authentically Catholic college and a thriving football program.

Make no mistake: You are entering into mission territory in a post-God world, but you were made for this. And with God by your side and a constant striving for virtue within your vocation, you too can be a saint.

Christ is King.

To the Heights.

Randi Richardson is a reporter for NBC News' TODAY.com based in Brooklyn.