Rhetorical Analysis Of Monica Lewinsky's The Price Of Shame

Sometimes there’s nothing more powerful than a personal story of tragedy and perseverance. With poise, humor and emotional pleas, Monica Lewinsky is able to captivate her audience through her narrative – one known to many in a public sense but far more vulnerable and moving when told through her private moments. Lewinsky’s speech, titled “The Price of Shame,” shares a broad call to action against cyberbullying and online harassment, highlighted by her own battles and a devastating tale of a young man who inspired her to finally speak out. Decades of silence create a sense of expectation among the audience. It also automatically captivate Lewinsky’s listeners as they hang on every word from someone they’ve heard so much about – but never from. Over the course of this paper, I will analyze Lewinsky’s TED Talk as a persuasive speech meant to galvanize listeners to recognize and actively combat cyberbullying in an age where many try to capitalize and profit on public humiliation. I will show how her persuasive style is effective with respect to her personal expertise and gut-wrenching stories, while also recognizing areas – like her call to action – where her argument could be strengthened and better delineated to

the audience.

Propositional statement
Strong persuasive speakers are able to distill the central idea of their speech into a single statement or phrase. Lewinsky uses a proposition of policy in her speech to guide the presentation. There are three categories of propositions, as defined by Beebe & Beebe in their book A Concise Public Speaking Handbook. The first two – Proposition of Fact and Proposition of Value – focus on debating two sides or comparing two things against one another, contrasted against the third – Proposition of Policy – that “advocates a specific action – changing a policy, procedure, or behavior” (Beebe & Beebe 210). For Lewinsky, that call for action does not come until she is well into her speech. Early on, she establishes a clear roadmap forward, saying, “Today I want to share some of my experience with you, talk about how that experience has helped shape my cultural observations and how I hope my past experience can lead to a change that results in less suffering for others.” She is direct but it is not clear exactly what will lead to change. Instead, Lewinsky spends much of the speech giving examples of her struggles and the abuse she faced online. This context hooked me and helped me understand the background for her argument, but I did not know what her call to action was until the end. While this was rather effective since I was actively engaged and interested, an earlier propositional statement might have clued the audience in earlier about how to combat online abuse.
Nearing the end of her speech, Lewinsky makes the central point: We need to become online “upstanders,” rather than bystanders.

She advocates that as more and more of our interactions move online, we need to be conscientious of our impact and bring compassion onto the internet. Lewinsky’s rhetoric with this propositional statement is strong, challenging the existence of how things are at this moment – the status quo (Keith & Lundberg 45). Her language is clear and the audience is in quick agreement because she established an emotional connection early. In this next section, I will look more closely at the way Lewinsky sets up her speech to effectively draw in her listeners before making powerfully making her argument for a better, more compassionate

society.

Organizational strategy
The topic of cyberbullying – and its severe consequences – is a heavy and difficult subject matter to discuss openly. Nonetheless, it is vitally important, which Lewinsky understands and highlights throughout her speech. I found her organizational strategy to be quite deft, allowing the audience to ease its way into the conversation before the speaker takes a serious tone. From there, a mix of personal stories, broader anecdotes and scientific research serve as the logical path toward her sweeping conclusion.
The speech starts with humor, an anecdote about being in rap songs. I found that to be an unnecessary attempt to bring the audience into the speech. It had nothing to do with the content or to establish credibility. What did connect with me – and likely with much of the audience – was a short moment later when she cracked another humorous line: “I’m probably the only person over 40 who does not want to be 22 again.” This was an effective start, the joke hitting because people know exactly who she is, her background and what happened when she was 22 years old. It reinforces her credibility and she is able to acknowledge that, yes, everybody in the room knows about her past and she shows she is able to laugh about it – something that becomes an important component of the overall argument. Lewinsky quickly transitions toward a serious tone, one that asks the audience to relate themselves to her. It’s extremely effective and she makes it clear that she acknowledges the mistakes of her past and regrets it, which establishes a level of ethos. Etho is a speaker’s perceived credibility and ethics, which help a listener believe and trust a persuasive message (Beebe & Beebe 203). By placing this early, Lewinsky looks to create a foundation on which she can build her argument. She knows, however, that there may be a lot of people in the audience who don’t see her ethically, so this is especially important for her.
At this point in the speech, Lewinsky moves into the crux of her issue. I found it was important for her to give technological context since the speech was in 2015 and she did, saying that her fate was “brought to you by the digital revolution” and that she was “Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.” In the central portion of her speech she offers various pieces of evidence to form her argument. Her main points are either personal anecdotes, broader cyberbullying stories or research and expert-based observations. Stories from her own life make up the bulk of the speech, which I appreciated and found most engaging. Specifically, she started with her own experiences, then to the story of Tyler Clementi – a young man who committed suicide after his roommate recorded him being intimate with another man – then back to her own story, then to the data-based evidence about online harassment, before finally ending with a broad “call to action” behind her outspokenness.
Lewinsky’s strategy was to build to a final climactic point, with a broad and important message that she could leave the audience. As I mentioned in the “Propositional statement” portion of this paper, the speech could have been stronger by enlightening the listener earlier as to what steps they could take to combat cyberbullying. However, I think she waited because she knew she might have a tough time convincing many audience members that she was credible and ethical, so it is understandable why she wanted to set a strong foundation before demanding change of other individuals. That approach ultimately got the point across and was only detrimental in that it left the listener waiting longer for any practical steps.