SPEECH ANALYSIS

Speech analysis contains various elements

One way of remembering some of these elements is the acronym: SOAPSTONE:

S: stands for the SPEAKER:

Who is the Speaker? What function or job does the person have? What political views does he
represent?

The speaker in this case is Barack Obama who was the president of the united states at the time
this speech was held in 2016.

O: stands for the OCCASION:

What is the situation in which the speech is delivered? Why is the speech delivered?

The occasion in which this speech is held is because of the graduating students that year and
because the school was having their 250 year anniversary and that was the first time a
president would hold a speech at the school,

A: stands for the AUDIENCE:

Who is the speaker addressing? What assumptions can you make about the audience and why?
What does the language indicate about the audience?

The audience at this speech is the graduating students of Rutgers university and their families
but the people the speech is really targeting is the graduates you can clearly hear that this is a
speech to them and he is not talking to the media or the parents but the graduates, and you
can especially hear that in the start where he says:
But somehow, you have survived such death-defying acts.  (Laughter.)  You also survived the
daily jockeying for buses, from Livingston to Busch, to Cook, to Douglass, and back again.
(Applause.)  I suspect that a few of you are trying to survive this afternoon, after a late night at
Olde Queens.  (Applause.)  You know who you are.  (Laughter.) But, however you got here, you
made it.  You made it.  
When reading that paragraph notice how often he used the word you about the audience, but
the thing is he only talk about things the graduates have done, experienced and will do. So, it is
only about the graduates and everybody in the audience knows it.
P: stands for PURPOSE:
What is the speaker's purpose? What reaction is he trying to obtain? How is he attempting to
spark that reaction in the audience?

The purpose of the speech is to ignite a spark within the graduates for progression and present
the world as it stood before and how it stands now and that now it is up to them to decide how
it will stand in the future because it is their responsibility now and it is them who needs to
redesign this society and solve the problems within it.

S: stands for SUBJECT MATTER:

What is the subject of the speech? Sum up the message in your own words. How has the
subject been presented by the speaker?

Obama is talking a lot about the US and talking about the progress that have been made by
people before them and presenting the world to them and in his own way saying look at all this
the US have accomplished in its history and explaining that with every new generation there
was a new wave of progress so he wants them to go out and make a change in this world no
matter how little he just want them to make the world better for the next graduates and the
graduates after them and so on, And presenting the world for them and putting it on a silver
platter and saying go get it and change it.

TONE: stands for - yes - TONE

What words and phrases show the tone of the speech?

The speaker have a formal tone but isn’t afraid to put the tone in a more jokingly manner
especially in the start where he lands a couple jokes to loosen the audience up and make them
a little less stiff and breaking the ice right from the start and you can tell that it is working
because he gets a lot of laughs in from the audience, the thin the speaker is trying to do is
making this a memorable and enjoyable event for the graduates.

METAPHORS: Imaginative comparisons where one thing is described in terms of another

without the use of words such as like or as

SIMILES: A direct comparison between two different things

Obama compares the society as it is now to the past and naming a lot of historic events which
has led us to the society, we have today
SYMBOLS: An object, person animal, or event representing not itself, but other objects or
qualities

Always look at which APPEALFORMS the speaker use to persuade his audience of his message -
the appealformes are:

Logos: the appeal to logic – facts and figures that support the speaker’s topic. When a
writer/speaker focuses on logos, the focus in the text will be on the subject matter itself.

Ethos: The appeal to trust (to trust the writer/speaker with a certain authority). The writer
focus on themselves to persuade you that they are qualified to speak on the subject. People
with a strong ethos do not use as many arguments. When you talk about a writer/speaker’s
ethos you talk about your (the reader’s) opinion about the writer.

Pathos: The appeal to emotions. A text which focuses on pathos will try to arouse the reader’s
feelings by using words and images that are sad, angry, passionate, happy etc.

Speeches especially political speech often also use other rhetorical devices. To find these you
can ask yourself the following questions:

How does the speaker reveal his own attitude? Identify special linguistic effects such as
REPETITION, use of CONTRAST, use of PERSONAL PRONOUNS (personlige pronominer, I, you,
he, she, it, we, you, they) and urging VERBAL expressions (action). Does the speaker use any
other special words? Does he evoke God, nation, liberty, freedom? To what effect?
Are there any reference to other speeches, people or literary works?

The speaker uses a nice blend of all the appeal forms in which he present Logos with historic
facts and does logical thinking in his speech when talking about the progression the US have
made in its history.
he uses ethos also in a way but not in the same way you usually see because he doesn’t need to
prove to the audience that he is qualified to present this speech because he is the damm
president for crying out loud they all know who he is and a lot of his accomplishments but that
doesn’t stop him for presenting his former self in the speech and telling them of when he was
just like them and had graduated and also was presented to the world just like they are now
and in that he makes a statement about how far they can get themselves from this point on.

There is also some pathos used in the speech because he is trying to make them happy that
they are now graduates but he is also trying to make them ambitious talking a lot about how
much there still is to do in this world and that this is only the beginning of their journey trough
life and that they need to set their fingerprint on this world.