Rhetorical Analysis Of Persuasive Speech

Persuasive Speech Analysis: “The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes”

This persuasive speech was given in Rio de Janeiro, and was a plea to the individuals in attendance at the United Nations Earth Summit to recognize how they are contaminating the environment with hopes that these audience members will revise their future proposals.

Severn Suzuki begins by appealing to ethos, informing the audience about her mission and her organization called ECO. Severn then utilizes anecdotes of her childhood, including a personal family story about how she found fish riddled with cancers on a fishing trip. By offering a personal story she gains the attention and trust of audience members, as she is now seen as a reliable source. She then immediately appeals to

This forces the audience to acknowledge Severn as a legible individual to listen to, thus gaining the audiences interest and trust. Severn uses numerous rhetorical devices such as anaphora to emphasize her cause. She begins sentences with “I am only a child…” to force the audience to reflect on how they are the ones meant to create change, yet a child is standing in front of them telling them what they need to do. Severn uses another anecdote about how a child on the street with nothing was willing to share, yet people who have everything are still so greedy to evoke emotion. Severn then ties these ideas together with a solution, using the government and nation borders as a symbol that represents the nations separations from each other that need to be removed so that the “five billion people-strong family can work together to save