Barrack Obama
A Study of the Spoken Language of Barrack Obama
In this study I will be analysing the speech of Barrack Obama, in his Victory Speech and his interview with David Letterman on ‘The Letterman Show’.
Obama frequently uses many forms of rhetoric when he talks, this is too show emphasis on what he is saying, in his Victory Speech he starts off straight away with a tri-colon, he uses ‘who still’ as the first two words in three consecutive phrases, he then anchors it across time by using ‘our founders’ ‘our time’ and ‘tonight’. This is too show that he too is familiar with all the things that Americans are brought up to believe in, he gets the audience listening to his every word by mentioning ‘[their] founders’, building up a sense of nationalism among the crowd. Finally, he says that ‘tonight is [the] answer’ implying that by electing him President, America will solve all its problems.
In the next three paragraphs of his Victory Speech he uses the phrase ‘It’s the answer’. This repetition shows to the audience that Obama truly believes that he is the answer to America’s problems. He also uses lots of opposites, then brings them all together with ‘Americans’ showing that no matter who they are or where they come from ‘we are, and always will be, the United States of America’ which brings great patriotism to the audience and by using ‘we’ Obama is saying to America that he is just an ordinary man, just like everyone else, and he wants to make a difference.
While Obama speaks very formally when he is addressing the public in his Victory Speech, there is an alteration in his dialect when he is being interviewed by David Letterman. When he is speaking formally, his speech is carefully planned out and is structured perfectly, whereas on the Letterman show, although Obama has a general idea of what he is going to be talking about, there are still some surprises, so there are a lot more pauses in his speech and he uses fillers such as ‘er-’ and ‘um-’ and also repeats
In this study I will be analysing the speech of Barrack Obama, in his Victory Speech and his interview with David Letterman on ‘The Letterman Show’.
Obama frequently uses many forms of rhetoric when he talks, this is too show emphasis on what he is saying, in his Victory Speech he starts off straight away with a tri-colon, he uses ‘who still’ as the first two words in three consecutive phrases, he then anchors it across time by using ‘our founders’ ‘our time’ and ‘tonight’. This is too show that he too is familiar with all the things that Americans are brought up to believe in, he gets the audience listening to his every word by mentioning ‘[their] founders’, building up a sense of nationalism among the crowd. Finally, he says that ‘tonight is [the] answer’ implying that by electing him President, America will solve all its problems.
In the next three paragraphs of his Victory Speech he uses the phrase ‘It’s the answer’. This repetition shows to the audience that Obama truly believes that he is the answer to America’s problems. He also uses lots of opposites, then brings them all together with ‘Americans’ showing that no matter who they are or where they come from ‘we are, and always will be, the United States of America’ which brings great patriotism to the audience and by using ‘we’ Obama is saying to America that he is just an ordinary man, just like everyone else, and he wants to make a difference.
While Obama speaks very formally when he is addressing the public in his Victory Speech, there is an alteration in his dialect when he is being interviewed by David Letterman. When he is speaking formally, his speech is carefully planned out and is structured perfectly, whereas on the Letterman show, although Obama has a general idea of what he is going to be talking about, there are still some surprises, so there are a lot more pauses in his speech and he uses fillers such as ‘er-’ and ‘um-’ and also repeats