Hillary Clinton Speech Analysis

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Hillary Clinton gave a speech to announce her presidential campaign on June 13, 2015. She gave her speech in New York City at Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Park, a location that connected directly with her speech. The audience consisted of Clinton’s followers, Democrats, and others who were interested in Clinton and the launching of her campaign. Clinton begins her speech thanking the audience and expressing how happy she is to be there, adding in some of her credentials as a politician. In the body of her speech, Clinton talks about how she plans to save the lower and middle class. She discusses America’s past and present and how learning from those two periods of time can shape America into a better future. Many times she talks about …show more content…

She addresses key issues that are near to many people’s hearts, such as LGBT discrimination, women’s pay, student loan debt, and global warming, to name just a few, to make people feel like she wants to win that fight for them. She even uses humour a few times throughout the speech, the most notable of which is when she refers to the song “Yesterday” by the Beatles, which just about every one is familiar with. She also ties the humour in with a jab at the Republicans, calling them a “choir” that is stuck in the past. Clinton also frequently uses repetitive literary devices such as anaphora and epistrophe. Though anaphora is used many times throughout the speech, one example is, “I believe that success isn’t measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how many children climb out of poverty… How many start ups and small businesses open and thrive… How many young people go to college without drowning in debt… How many people find a good job… How many families get ahead and stay ahead.” Through this tactic, certain parts of Clinton’s speech will stick in people’s heads. Clinton also uses storytelling to arouse emotion in her audience. Her most frequent storytelling topic is her mother, who “…taught [Clinton] that everybody needs a chance and a champion.” Her mother struggled as a child and a young adult, and Clinton expands upon that to evoke sympathy from the audience. Yet, Clinton …show more content…

In the introduction, she refers to the fact that they are in New York where she served as Senator, across the water from the United Nations headquarters were she served as a representative, and in a park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt, a President who is well-liked among most Americans. She also ends her introduction with saying, “[To be here] in a place… with absolutely no ceilings,” a phrase that aroused the audience into cheering because of its limitless implication. Later in the speech, Clinton refers to the new World Trade Center, which can be seen from the park, and ties that into a statement saturated with ethos where she talks about how she helped New York recover from 9/11. I am not involved in politics at all so I did not have much of an opinion of Hillary Clinton before watching this speech. That being said, I think that this speech was very well done. Though it was obviously put together and rehearsed beforehand, the delivery was well executed. I felt myself reacting to the pathos and ethos that Clinton added all throughout her speech and believing what she said. I think that the “poetic” lines and literary devices she used, combined with her charismatic delivery, made her speech

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