Speech Analysis Example

Assignment

 

Speech Analysis

On November 9, 2016 Donald Trump gave a speech, addressed to all American citizens in order to inform them about what they can expect of him in his role as the President of the United States of America.

He explains that America has to work together as a union, without racism, to solve all the problems or to renew shortcomings in America. Moreover, he makes really clear, that he is the right president and that they will achieve anything based on his knowledge. In the future, he represents America as one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Having a look at his argumentation, it gets obvious, that he justifies his thesis with arguments based on the visions of the American dream. It cannot be denied, that Donald Trump does not use real negative arguments like most of the presidents before. Analysing this fact, it is clearly to be seen that Trump represents the strength of America and tries to convince the people of believing in him and his plans.

Quite at the beginning he evokes the feeling of belonging together as a union through the enumeration of “races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs […]“ (ll.11-12). With this aspect he refers to the idea of multiculturalism, in which everyone is treated equal and in which everyone has the same opportunities no matter to which class, religion etc. they belong. Pointing out this belief quite at the beginning contributes to the strategy of creating a feeling of confidence coming from him, which stays present in the listener’s mind during the whole speech. In general the speech is structured in a really understandable way, with a simple linguistic register to lay a focus on the content, which is why he sometimes uses colloquial sentence structures (cf.l.18).

“Rebuilding a nation“ (l.14) stands for the task of going back to the roots of the American Dream in order to achieve his goals and to solve all the problems and equality as it is one of the main promises the American Dream brings with it. Seeing this fact with the repetition of “tremendous potential“ (l.18), it delivers a feeling of uniting the circle of arguments. By explaining that he worked in a business where he was looking for hidden potential, he represents America like one of his new projects, which can be seen positively and negatively. But through his repetition, he clearly shows that he believes in America and that this is what all citizens should do to reach their united dream. Moreover, his speech seems a little patriotic, which can be identified through structures like “We will have […] the strongest economy anywhere in the world“ (ll.25-26) and “America’s interests first“ (l.34). This hyperbole is an indicator, showing that if you believe in your country and always put yourself at first place you do believe in change and only if this all is present you can be the best version of yourself or create the best version of one’s country.

At the end, he takes up the idea of the American dream once more, which is the most common symbol for unlimited dreams and possibilities (cf.l.29). So one can say that he wants to make the American citizens strongly believe in their country’s future.

After analysing Donald Trump’s choice of words there is no doubt, that he uses personal pronouns as a central rhetorical device in order to include all his citizens and to create a feeling of belonging (“us“ (l.7), “we“ (l.22)). Nevertheless, one has to mention that he also uses “I“ and “me“ very often, especially at the beginning, which contributes only to his own power and shows that this is very typical for Trump, demonstrating his greatness and feeling of superiority (cf.ll.15-16).

Having taken all aspects into consideration, one can see that Donald Trump‘s use of rhetorical and linguistic devices has one goal. He wants to create the feeling of unity and to remind all the citizens to work together and that one day every American citizen will have the opportunity of fulfilling anything within the country’s beliefs.

Julia, 10. Klasse Gymnasium. Die Speech Analysis wurde mit der Note 2+ bewertet.

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