Rhetorical Analysis Of Tiger Woods's Speech

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On February 19, 2010, Tiger Woods spoke to his fans, supporters, and non-supporters in search of forgiveness. In the speech, he apologizes for his acts of cheating on his wife, Elin. He hopes to change and gain support from his audience in doing so. Woods issues a strong apology by showing his respectable character, establishing culpability in the audience, and utilizing first-person point of view.
Appealing to ethos, Tiger Woods shows his faithful side as he takes credibility for his actions. At the start of the speech, Woods gives a simple greeting saying, “Good morning. And thank you for joining me.” With this nice greeting, Woods immediately gives himself a stronger impression to produce a positive effect in the audience.Then, Woods makes …show more content…

In addition, he takes enormous credibility for his behavior in the paragraph starting “‘I knew my actions were wrong...’” Woods shows his honesty to the audience and boosts his chances of forgiveness as he shows awareness of his mistakes in what he had done. He also emphasizes his mistakes when he apologizes to parents who pointed to him as a role model for their kids. This shows his noble side and his sensitivity for families and others, sustaining his hopes for forgiveness. Woods also claims responsibility for his behavior by admitting his need for help, which makes others realize how he is learning how to change, in order to make his apology more sincere. Not only does he mention his need for help, but also that he is thankful for the help of his peers. Once again this shows his noble side and awareness of the helpfulness of others, which will continue to make people more likely to forgive him. Lastly, at the end of the speech he asks …show more content…

The first way he does this is by mentioning his foundation and how he wants to continue to help young people “achieve their dreams through education.” By showing he continues to care about children throughout the country, he makes people feel guilty for bringing endless pressure upon him. Knowing he helps children, the audience realizes Woods has a strong, positive side to himself and not just a negative side. Therefore, the audience is more likely to forgive someone who cares for children rather than someone who cheated on his wife. Also, Woods mentions a false rumor about his wife which claims she attacked him as a result of the issue. He makes people feel guilty for believing and spreading such a negative idea as there has “‘never been an episode of domestic violence in [their] marriage.’” Continuing to produce guilt, he causes the audience to begin to feel shame on themselves for their behavior and feel the need to forgive him. Thereafter, he continues on to mention his children and how they have been treated unfairly also and how the media reported his “2 ½-year-old daughter’s school location.” The audience realizes how mistreated his toddler was and guilt is produced as nobody wants to see a child’s life being open to danger. People will feel bad that Woods’ young girl was followed like this and will become more likely to forgive him because he is viewed as a protective

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