Speech Analysis - Beispiel

At the end of her argumentation, she shares her optimistic view on the whole situation, mentioning to overcome the obstacles ahead. The clear purpose behind this structured argumentation is to convince the audience and winning them over by creating an atmosphere of belonging. Mentioning first just the positive, glamorous facts about America before drastically confronting them with the truth lets the perfect constructed state of mind of a lot of people shiver so that reality is actually becoming the reality. Nevertheless, she finishes with positive aspects, so that the audience believes in her will to change and renew America for the better.

Convincing the reader does not only work by a good argumentative structure, represented by the style of language, Clinton uses in her speech. She starts her argumentation with an idealistic confrontation by starting “That’s really how America is supposed to work […]“ (l.1). With this line, she draws the audience’s attention, because the people directly start listening while thinking about their own daily problems. Using the gerundive right at the beginning indicates that this is a working process, which will manifest itself in society right at the moment the words are spoken (cf.ll.1,5).

Next to this it is a stylistic device used throughout the whole speech guiding the arguments like a red ribbon. “Planting trees that we will not be sitting in the shade of […]“ (l.2) represents in a metaphorical way, how the American Dream established itself ans shaped society. On the one hand she is clearly referring to the first ancestors of each family that settled in the USA, but on the other hand she is also including new generations that might be listening. Not only through this, but also because of the often used pronouns we (cf.ll.2,5) or us (cf.l.8), she creates the feeling of belonging and equality. Clinton directly poses the opportunity for the audience to listen and maybe negotiate on one eye-level with her. Nevertheless, she expounds that they cannot expect “[…] to be handed anything on a silver platter […]“ (ll.4f.). Using this symbol, Clinton directly refers to the conceptual roots of the American dream, mentioning the mere importance of self-reliance and individual work ethic. Regarding to the former Senator it should not be seen as “[…] a fair shot of success […]“ (l.5), which appears to seem really realistic due to the fact that success cannot be injected like antibiotica unless some people might find themselves in already a wealthy family (cf.l.29f.).

By a further analysis of the speech it gets obvious that Hillary Clinton tries to reach out to the public on a very personal level by creating a feeling of confidence in her mission because “[p]eople everywhere told [her] that that is what they‘ve always loved and admired about America […]“ (ll.6f.). She evokes the feeling of confidential implementation in the public. Combining this with an enumeration of American values (cf.ll.7f.), she also directly refers to the mind state of a lot of Americans. Besides this positive conotations she shows that she also is aware of the risk by stating that a los of people risk theit life and stability to join the multicultural society of America (cf.l.9). With this she demonstrates the power of the American Dream, being a role model not only for the ‘normal‘ society, but also for head of states like China‘s new president, to which Clinton is referring as a potential implementor of the Chinese dream (cf.ll.9f.). “When prosperity and common purpose are broadly shared, when all our people believe they have the opportunity, and in fact do, […]“ (ll.11f.), reflects that the opportunity of sharing an equal foundation is or can become reality if a certain share of prosperity and the belief to work hard is alive. With the insertion at the end of the latest quote, she directly speaks to the audience, making them aware of their opportunity and equal treatment of the state and for Clinton even more important, of her own mind set as possible president. Referring to the “empirical evidence“ (l.14), Clinton uses positively connotated superlatives like “healthiest“ (l.14) or “fastest“ in order to first of all raise positive emotions but also to show her appreciation towards the people in the middle class, without whom society could not be as stable (cf.ll.14f.). She clearly lifts her own position up by introducing this point, but also makes aware of the fact that it is easier to find a “[…] way into that broad-based middle“ (l.16), than directly striving for a life as a millionaire.

Finishing off her positive outlook, she refers once more to the concept of the American Dream using an anaphoric sentence structure, while maintaining some kind of parallelism (cf.ll.18f.). Clinton clearly tries to inject the belief in and in the American Dream into the people’s brains, referring to their own vital strength and everything that lays the foundation for achieving the American Dream. Following up with the introduction of reality and a lot of negative aspects attending the A.D., Hillary Clinton demonstrates her pity for all the families, that are finding themselves in these circumstances by using negatively connotated words introducing consequences such as “unfortunately“ (l.21). Furthermore, Clinton tries to reach out demonstrating sensibility for this contrast to a word model (cf.l.24), which cannot be adopted to all citizens of the USA. “Many Americans understandably feel frustrated, even angry“ (l.25), reflects that she really tries to speak connected to one’s native soil and once more presents her understanding of the situation. Another really important fact is that Clinton refers to the audience as Americans and not only as people of the USA, which represents her political promises of giving people from external countries a home. She opens the possibility of the A.D. to everyone living in America.

Quite at the end of her speech she refers to statistics and data, to actually show a proof to the audience, letting her arguments sound believable (cf.ll.26f.,32 f.). Showing her pity even more for the people finding themselves in a difficult situation, she connotates the wealthy life of kids that are born into prosperity and stay there without any effort, very negatively because it reflects the “opposite of the mobility we think of as the hallmark of America“ (ll.30f.). The fight against the hard division of poor and rich is also represented by the metaphorical ladder of success, which is depicted for “[…] climb[ing] out of relative poverty“ (l.27). Nevertheless, she also expresses that especially Afro-Americans “are falling out of the middle class altogether“ (ll.34f.), by which she refers again to the fight about stability, which a lot of people cannot manage and for that fall off the ladder (cf.l.35). At the end, Clinton uses a lot of first-person pronouns to demonstrate to the audience, that she is a believer in America and that “the time has come for [them] to begin, […] for [their] sakes, for [their] children, […] for [their] future grandchildren“ (ll.36f.). With that argument, this appeal she is once ad for all bonding the audience’s future with hers, which seems to be like a symbiotic relationship, depending on each other. Nevertheless, she also mentions, “[that] it really does take a village“ (l.39)., to achieve everything her definition of America and the Dream, that lives within, promises.

Having analysed Hillary Clinton’s speech, it clearly can be concluded, that she really is aware of what she wants to achieve because of her intentional use of stylistic devices on all levels. The argumentative structure while maintaining a strict use of pronouns makes her appear to be one of the audience members. Even if she uses positive adjectives and superlatives, she completely reduces this talking about bad and negative impacts. Comparing this speech to for example her competitor Donald Trump, it becomes clear that Hillary Clinton also believes in the American Dream but still does not try to hide the dark side that comes with it. Clinton clearly states what she wants to achieve and that after all it remains a challenge of the unity and not of a single millionaire to tackle the ongoing problems of the past and present.

Julia, 10. Klasse Gymnasium. Die Speech Analysis wurde mit der Note 1+ bewertet.

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