Spacecat
Answer each question in depth and provide specific evidence from
the text or speaker whenever available. The more you write, the better!
Title of the text:
S
SPEAKER:
Who is the speaker/writer?
What do we know about
them? What can you tell or
what do you know about
the speaker that helps you
understand the point of
view expressed?
P
PURPOSE:
What is the speaker/writer
hoping to accomplish?
What is the reason behind
this piece? What do they
want the audience to do
after having listened?
A
AUDIENCE: 
 The audience was the 2019 graduating class of Northwestern. She is trying to reach
Who is the speaker/writer
trying to reach? How do we
know? Do they indicate a
specific audience? What
assumptions exist in the
text about the intended
audience?
C
CONTEXT: 
 This speech was given at Northwestern in the spring of 2019 in the spring. This wasn’t
What is the time and place
of this piece? What is
happening in the world as
it relates to the subject of
the speech or the
speaker/writer?
E
EXIGENCE:
What was the spark or
catalyst that moved the
speaker/writer to
act/write? How did that
event impact the
speaker/writer?
Tara Westover is the speaker. We know that she wrote Educated and she grew up in a
survivalist mormon family and then grew independent from them. She has a PhD, and
went to BYU and then Cambridge. From her book Educated, we know that she is from
Idaho and wasn’t especially exposed to the world most people know until later in her
childhood and on. Her experiences shown in the book help us see how she may have
been able to become mindful of situations like this, because she was very much in a
similar situation where she only showed people what she wanted to, like Charles, for
example. (And also how she mentions in the speech, this is how she felt in the photo
with her parents.)
Westover wrote and presented this commencement speech in order to get listeners to
be conscious and mindful about their social media presence. Her experiences in this
area are useful, and so spreading them through her speech to encourage others to
think of the message in a similar way is important. She wants the audience to go and
care for their un-instagrammable self, because it doesn’t always get the credit it
deserves. She says this in her call to action, where she encourages the graduates to
check in with their real selves as they post their graduation picture that they will get.
this group of people, but also anyone that is listening. This message can apply to
almost every single person, even if they don’t post a lot on social media. There are
other ways that we portray ourselves differently than what we actually are/what we
go through, like simply talking to someone else and giving a smile even when we don’t
feel like smiling. Therefore, the audience of her speech is basically anyone that will
listen because it can apply to everyone. The speech doesn’t explicitly state an
audience, however it is implied to be for people with social media who post or looks
at others' pictures.
that long ago, and it was also not long after Westover finished her school education.
2019 is within the years where the rise of social media was huge, and so her message
is incredibly relevant. Again, as stated about the audience, almost everyone can relate
because social media is so huge. This is important to her message because it will
spread to a wide amount of people due to the specific time she gave the speech.
A big exigence for Westover to write this speech was the photo of her and her parents
at her graduation. She uses this as an example to display her point in her speech.
However, her entire life is kind of the exigence because she can relate to this idea so
much, as most people can. When it came to people she was close to like Charles and
Nick, she chose what to tell them and what not to. This is the same as the point she is
making with social media. To remind people to be mindful of their un-instagramable
self, she uses her own experiences as a catalyst for her message, and most likely very
much a catalyst for writing the speech.
 C
CHOICES:
What are the rhetorical
choices that the
speaker/writer makes in
the speech? Think about
overall structure, devices,
diction, syntax, etc.
She uses pauses in between her sentences to create emphasis and make people think
about what she is saying. If she just went on and on then it would be easier to just
hear words with no meanings, but because she pauses, it gives the listener a moment
to analyze what she really said.
She compared her reality changing to a rock turning into sand.
She says that our pictures on social media are literally filtered which was said to make
the listener think about the double meaning of what she said. This forces people to
realize what her speech is about; The fact that we chose what to put online in a
specially curated filter.

A
APPEALS:
Which of the three
rhetorical appeals (ethos,
logos, pathos) are present
in the text? Where? Why?
She uses humour a lot in the beginning of the speech and this makes her a likeable
speaker which can make her seem more reliable if people like her. She knows that she
has a big box to fill but she still shows that she is a worthy speaker to trust. She also
gives her credibilities and the education she received while again making light humor
about how she doesn’t have a high school diploma. The humor also appeals to pathos
because it lightens up the audience and everyone can feel a little more relaxed while
she moves onto the main point of her speech. She also uses a sort of logical
assumption to convey her point, like saying that everyone graduating was their
“instagrammable-self,” because no one posts about the working process to graduate.
She also stated that you can’t get around the fact that you look like crap when you are
laying with your child in the hallway in the middle of the night. This may not be proven
with facts from studies, but everyone can agree that it is true.

T
TONE:
What is the
speaker/authors attitude
toward the subject? Is the
tone the same throughout
the whole piece? Where
does it shift? What
evidence is there to
demonstrate the tone? 

She uses humor a lot to lighten the mood of the speech at the beginning. She then
speaks slowly and with pauses to create a dramatic affect and to create a very
attentive listening situation. The room is quiet aside from the laughs at her light
humor, and it demonstrates how the audience is actively listening. It displays how well
she was able to grasp their attention and how sophisticated she was speaking about
the subject.

Now, write a gorgeous first paragraph with a clear thesis

In the growing social media age of today, almost everyone can relate to the selective portrayal of oneself
online. Tara Westover addresses this agreeable fact in a commencement speech given to the 2019 graduating
class of Northwestern. Westover is an author who wrote Educated, which explores her experiences growing
up with her family in a mormon fundamentalist setting. Her experiences here were noted in the speech, where
she explained how her graduation picture with her parents encouraged her to reflect on the reality she was
posting on social media, vs. the reality that was really real. In her speech, she encourages the graduates to care
for their “non-instagrammable self,” and be conscious of the differences between what is being posted and
what isn’t. By grasping her audience’s attention with light humor, relating to listeners with her own personal
experiences, and placing factual realities that hit close to home, Tara Westover encourages the 2019
graduating class at Northwestern to take a step back and be mindful of their non-instagrammable self.