Emma Watson's Literacy Devices In The Heforshe Campaign

On the 20th of September of 2014 the HeForShe campaign was launched at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Emma Watson who is a major advocate for gender equality was chosen to represent and give a speech. The campaign was about gender equality and what the word ‘feminism’ really means. Emma Watson used many literacy devices to clearly put across the purpose of her speech. The techniques that she covered throughout her speech also help intertwine with some literary theories such as the Marxist Criticism and the Feminist Criticism.

Watson’s speech is clear and strategic in structure; which allows for her to elaborate on her purpose very clearly, an example of this is when she directly went to the dismissal of all misconceptions of

Watson’s use of literacy devices such as intertextuality throughout her speech helps her to argumentatively state in a formal way that “we want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be involved”. Another literacy device that Watson uses throughout her speech is the amplification of sentences to help add extra meaning and understandability, as if the audience understands, they may take action to the purpose A literary theory that the above literacy devices connect into would be the Marxist Criticism as they help to provide a benefit to someone or something, for an example of the Marxist Criticism is when Watson says “Men – I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too” this is showing that men will benefit from ending feminism. Marxist Criticism is when someone or something benefits from something so in this case, who is it that is benefiting from Watson’s speech? Women are the main people who benefit from Watson’s speech as she is advocating for women to have equal rights and opportunities as men have. However, she does state in her speech that “gender equality is your issue too”. When Watson states that, she begins to point out some of the stereotypes held against men like, mental illnesses, the need to be tough where feelings are hidden. You know what they don’t have to have hidden feelings because all that bottling up of emotion is leading to the UK’s suicide rates to be the, “biggest killer of men from age 20-49”, by doing this she is showing that “men don’t have the benefits of equality either” and that this speech can benefit them