Rhetorical Analysis Of The Thing Is A Stutter

The Thing Is, I Stutter

Megan Alexandra Washington, an Australian musician and song writer, performs jazz, alternative rock music and plays the piano and the guitar. In her ted talk, she talks about the importance of language. This is something that is very important to her because she has a stutter. Singing, it is not apparent that she has this speech disorder. While singing, she is her true self and can express her ideas fluently. There are thousands of people in the world that struggle with a stutter, and her speech may inspire those who can relate. She uses personal stories and humor to deliver her message in an effective way.

Megan’s audience would be anyone struggling with a stutter or speech disorder, musicians, and of any

age, gender or race. She wants her audience to be affected by this speech immediately and eventually. Immediately, she would like her audience to understand where she’s coming from and how she feels. She does this by telling personal stories of her life and how she has dealt with her stutter. She used to think when she was little, that her stutter would go away. Now, she has accepted her stutter, and states, “I am an adult woman who spends her life as performer, with a speech impediment. So, I might as well come clean about it.” She learned a form of therapy that allowed her to not stutter when she spoke but, that voice was not her voice, and is not how she would like to sound. She used this voice when talking on radio shows, and sounded very serene. In order to be comprehendible, she was forced to use this sing song type of voice, when doing interviews. Eventually, she would like anyone who may be struggling with the same disadvantage, to except themselves and maybe try singing to express themselves. She states why Music is important to her, “Singing for me is a sweet relief. It is the only time I feel fluent. It is the only time when what comes out of my mouth is comprehensively exactly what I intended.” This is how she ends her speech, and leaves the audience feeling happy that she can fully express herself through her music. This could inspire others with a stutter to do the same, and is truly moving.
Megan Washington’s main idea is that you should not limit yourself because of a disorder or disadvantage. Even though she does not stutter well she sings, she has to introduce her band, talk before and after the show, and do interviews. This is where she struggles, but did not give up her dream and shared her stories on how she overcame it. She realizes her biggest issues, and does her best to either avoid or reword what she’s saying in order to not stutter. She states, “If I’m going to use the word ‘Wednesday’ in a sentence, and I’m coming up to the word, and I can feel that I’m going to stutter or something, I can change the word to ‘tomorrow,’ or ‘the day after Tuesday,’ or something else.” Megan does not let her stutter stop her from doing what she loves. She starts off her speech with background explaining that she has a stutter, and touches on her adolescent life of growing up with a stutter. She then goes on to talk about her main issues with having a stutter, like meeting another person with a stutter, the use of pronouns and S’s and T’s. After stating all her flaws, she talks about how she attempts to overcome them. Lastly, and the most persuasive, the last five paragraphs of her speech explain why singing is so important to her and lead up to her performance. This was the most emotional part of the speech, and shows Megan’s personality the most. The whole speech was unified around the main idea of not limiting yourself, and unified around the desired effect of inspiration on the audience. By not looking at her phone and looking at the audience more, Megan showed that those last paragraphs were the most important. She voiced her experiences in order to make the audience want to do the same.
Megan uses persuasive appeals such as pathos in her personal stories, and an anaphora.

She states, “I sort of lived to this idea that when I’m grown, I’ll have learned to speak French, and when I’m grown, I’ll learn how to manage my money, and when I’m grown, I won’t have a stutter, and then I’ll be able to public speak and maybe be the Prime Minister and anything’s possible and, you know.” The repeated phrase of, when I’m grown, emphasizes the fact that until now, she believed that her stutter would go away someday, just like the rest of those adolescent beliefs. There is also humor in this quote, and by making her audience laugh she creates a better listening environment. This speech’s persuasiveness was mainly dependent upon her personal efforts and experiences. Megan’s personality allowed her speech to be more persuasive, listeners could tell she felt very passionate about music. During the speech, Megan intentionally, as best as she could, avoided using words that started with the letter S or T. She knows that these tend to cause her stutter to happen. She also held her phone the entire time and read off the screen, which made it easier not to stutter. Throughout the entire speech, there were 57 or more stutters. However, as she ended her speech with the singing a song that she wrote, she did not stutter

once.
Overall, this speech was well-written and well centered around the main idea of not limiting yourself because of a struggle. Ending the speech by singing a song, was very important to the persuasiveness of the speech, as well. Megan Washington showed the audience her true self while singing. Talking more about her speech impediment could have made it stronger, but the few stories she did give enhanced the speeches effectiveness.