A Rhetorical Analysis Of This Is Water By David Foster Wallace

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“This is Water” is a commencement speech written for students about to graduate with a Liberal Arts Degree from a prestigious school and seems to be geared more directly to those questioning the validity of their degree. David Foster Wallace explains that the education they received allows the audience to handle the monotony and frustrations of the world better by stepping back and realizing that the individual in the audience are not the center of universe. David’s diverse diction gives this work a strong educated but down to earth feel using the words from “didactic” to “bullshitty”.

David Foster Wallace is speaking to an audience who just received part of not all of their formal education so he has to use great words such as “platitudes” but he also has to realize he is talking to kids who just spent a good few years partying and experimenting with substances so a curse word squeezed in about …show more content…

It is poetic with the alliteration of three two syllable words in a row with and in between giving you a comfortable pattern that he then interrupts with a hard “d” sound really putting an emphasis on the word disgusting. Along with the use of only simple words gives the audience that feeling of “obviously! I should have seen that sooner”, then the vivid images a male automatically get when he hears “heroic father” forces the audience to want, almost need, to follow Wallace’s advice. Repetition is used another time with, “…My hungriness and My fatigue and My desire...” really bring attention to the self-centeredness of people. The style of this speech is well written but wastes to many words on an uncomplicated underlining theme of think about what others are going

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