Analysis: Barack Obama’s victory speech, November 2012

Shortly after his reelection to the office of US president in late 2012, Barack Obama delivered the
following victory speech at one of his campaign rallies. He intends to thank his supporters and
political allies for helping him, and wants to bring across his goals, vision and plans for the next four
years that he will be in office.

Obama begins his speech by alluding to the American revolution in the first line, indirectly implying
himself to be working in the spirit of said revolution, for many one of the most important events in
US history. By using the term „perfecting“, he also admits flaws in the current state of the country,
making him seem more honest, but also portraying himself as a person that will fix those issues, or at
least move the US closer to „perfection“.

Moving on, he directly adresses the audience, saying the US is progressing because of them. Here, he
is not only addressing his own supporters, but also those of his opponent Mitt Romney which, for
Obama, are part of an „American family“ and posses an „American spirit“. In this sentence, he also
uses very emotive language, almost bordering on hyperbole. With this, he emphasizes the greatness
and good qualities of America and the American people. He also describes America’s long journey to
it’s current point, again pointing out the resilience and spirit of Americans. He again affirms his
solidarity with Romney supporters, and uses the phrase „For America, the best is yet to come“,
evoking very strong emotions and feelings of optimism in the audience.

Further, he describes his vision for the America he is willing to leave to the next generation. Using
collective pronouns, he lets the audience feel as if he is standing up for their own children. He
effectively uses enumeration, adressing social issues like education reform and employment, but also
larger problems like climate change or economic inequality. Throughout all of this, he uses an
anaphora in starting every paragraph with a variation of „We want…“, and later „We believe…“,
making use of collective pronouns and giving the text a sense of rhythm. In a way, this also works to
reaffirm his own position: most of the points he makes sound like common sense, for example good
jobs and a strong military and discredit his political opposition for seemingly opposing them, though
this is of course only implied. He utilizes repetition and enumeration through these paragraphs to act
as a memory aid.

To evoke emotion, he creates the image of an immigrant’s daughter, going to American schools and
identifying as American, making the audience sympathize with her, and by extension Obama for
wanting to create a more tolerant America. He repeats twice „That’s where we need to go“ to make
clear this segment of the speech has finally concluded, and also reaffirm his support for all the
statements and opinions above.

Finishing out the speech, he again repeats the anaphora „I believe“ in describing some of his goals,
and in a callback to the start of the speech, again alludes to America’s founding fathers. To close,
Obama utilizes a massive enumeration in describing the various minority groups in the US to state
that all of them can achieve the „American Dream“, if they so tried. This conclusion works well as a
summary of the entire speech: Obama uses a historical allusion, emphasizes the importance of
diversity, again lays out some of his goals and finally concludes with the sentiment that anyone can
achieve the American Dream. In my opinion, Obama achieves his goal of thanking his allies, but also
motivating them for the years ahead very well. The speech is not only emotional, but also well
written.