Rhetorical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Speech

I decided to explore the effect that a white male audience has on the tone of a writer who primarily caters to a non-white audience when the speaker, subject, and context remain the same. I questioned how audience and purpose affect a text’s structure and content and found that by changing the audience, I was forced to go into descriptive detail to explain the oppression imposed upon African Americans to white men. By writing a speech, Toni Morrison’s serious and passionate tone towards both race and gender equity are not erased. I refer to the audience as “you” and bring up that they’re in a position of power to force a separation between Toni, an African American woman, and the audience, white men, because the point is not to establish a

relationship, but to force white people to think about the corruption they’ve brought about in the African American community. I kept the most recent context of Song of Solomon, the 1960s, the same. The 60s marked the official beginning of the civil rights movement, when white people were just beginning to understand the injustices forced upon African Americans. Since speakers were able to control the speed and reiterate the most important details to evoke emotional responses from the audience, speeches served as a primary text type during the civil rights movement. To incorporate Song of Solomon and other works by Toni Morrison into my speech, I mention flying and freedom and the flawed gender constructs that plague American society. In the speech, I first establish the topic and Toni Morrison’s right to be speaking about race with anecdotes. The speaker uses repetition and rhetorical questions to ingrain her ideals and encourage white men to think about their role in society and use their power to create change.