Saturday, October 1, 2011

Obama's Back to School Address

President Barrack Obama's Back to School Address given a couple days ago used many different techniques to help gain and maintain the attention and support of his audience. The first thing Obama did was, as an introduction, have a student from the local high school where the address was given introduce Obama. This is a good use of ethos, even before Obama said a single word. He does this to show to his audience that he really cares and has trust in our generation. Obama also uses a little comedy when he gets on stage by calling the girl who gave the speech, the student government president of the school which hosted Obama's address, Ms. President. This helps lighten the atmosphere before Obama dives into the main content of his speech.

During the address Obama speaks directly to all the students watching him which makes the content of his speech seem more real to us, and not a long boring talk about education. Obama uses mostly short, easy-to-understand syntax which is particularly important in speaking to teenagers. Obama also uses a little repetition and parallelism in a few places, however it is not near as powerful as other speeches including MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech which used repetition, parallelism, and climatic order to a very large extent, and used it well to pump up his crowd.

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