SPEECHES

Introduction
● Speeches are texts spoken face-to-face to a live audience
● Speeches have the ability to make an impact and give strong messages
● To appeal to its target audience
● The audience, setting and speaker often dictate the content, tone and
message of the speech.
● The speech “We choose to go to the moon” will be used to illustrate the
features of a speech

Context and Significance

Speech:
Kennedy’s speech can be broken into 4 main parts and points, each of which play a significant role in the
overall construction of his message.

Evolution and Background information: Providing the target audience some context: The first point
Kennedy addresses in the body of his speech is the breakneck pace at which technology, knowledge, and
discovery has evolved. He gives some background history of the development taken place in the previous
years.

Goals and plans moving ahead: He seamlessly transitions this allegory into his second main point, which
is that “the exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not.” Space exploration is, he
again reinforces, an inevitability. Yet he continues his point by stating that the United States has vowed
never to see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with “instruments of knowledge and
understanding.”

Challenges and obstacles: Kennedy’s next point, however, addresses some of the potential criticisms and
concerns, and culminates in his ultimate thesis. Space exploration is hard and costly. The hazards of space
“are hostile to us all.” It will be an ultimate test of American skill, expertise, and talent. In face of all this,
perhaps the challenge is too dangerous to pursue.

Development taking and taken place: He spends the last part of his speech discussing the steps the United
States and his administration have already taken to achieve that ultimate goal. He points out the facilities
that have opened to support an effort in space exploration, the Saturn rockets which are currently being
developed (and, coincidently, which would eventually take American astronauts to the moon), the
satellites which America has already put into orbit, and the plethora of high-paying and high-skill jobs
which the space industry has already created.
Context
The context and circumstances of President Kennedy’s “we go to the moon speech,” delivered near the
height of the Cold War and at the beginning of the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet
Union, were enormously significant. The United States was rapidly losing the race into space, and in turn
a competition in technological superiority and prestige, to its Cold War adversary. The American public
was on the verge of panic over the implications of a Red Moon. President Kennedy needed to forge a
new direction for the United States, one that would excite and energize the American public and
reestablish America’s position of superiority in global affairs.

Significance
The speech is significant and important in terms of its historical context because Kennedy was to
persuade the audience to agree on the decision of going up to the moon. He was trying to convince the
audience that the good deal of money will result a country’s pride. He also wanted to show the whole
world that America was ready to take on the dream of going up to the moon, and they will be the first
country to achieve this dream. The speech initiated qualities of empowerment and motivation amongst the
audience and soon after Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon in the year 1969.

Audience, Structure and Message

● Audience
○ The audience of this speech is the college gathering he is
addressing at Rice University.
○ Being a president, his actual audience is the nation, and
technically many others around the world.
○ Hence, he often speaks about ambitions and promises.

● Message
○ The aim of this speech is to convince skeptics of his aspiration to
land a manned spaceship on the moon.
○ He portrays his agenda as being part of core American values and
helping assert America’s global dominance.
● Structure
○ The speech uses short paragraphs.
○ He references science and its value to humanity to elaborate how
going to the moon will help society prosper.

● Paralanguage
○ Pres. Kennedy often turns around to look at the whole crowd, to
engage every member of the audience.

○ The “thumb-point” is a common gesture used by public speakers

in American politics

○ He speaks louder, and uses a higher pitched voice when

emphasising points he wishes to make (See “We shall go to
……………….because they are hard)
Speech
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman
Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my
first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and
we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and
fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our
ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working
today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of
growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the
unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years
of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little
about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to
cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other
kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began
less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this
whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and
airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power,
and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars
before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new
ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and
hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this
city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited
and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--
and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and
honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome
with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and
progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join
in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader
of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial
revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation
does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we
mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and
we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom
and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with
instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we
intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and
security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve
these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-
faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and
they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all
technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man,
and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new
ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go
unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of
land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without
repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all.
Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never
come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why
climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear
as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the
Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex
exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn
C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power
equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1
rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered
together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral
as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in
the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to
the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space
science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it
in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us
unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less
public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend
to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and
environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers
for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the
harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new
companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands
in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this
growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on
the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center,
will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers
in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200
million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion
from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was
in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget
now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes
and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to
more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this
program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and
vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the
control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of
new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several
times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch,
carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival,
on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the
atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the
sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is
out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we
ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the
sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be
done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done.
And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great
national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked
why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes
for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most
hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

Appeal
● Ethos
○ Ethos is a form of appeal through the use of ethics.
○ In the highlighted region, Pres. Kennedy uses the audience’s
America-first ethics (which was heightened during the Cold War)
to persuade the audience

● Pathos
○ Pathos is a form of appeal that uses emotions to convince the
audience.
○ Pathos is used in this speech to evoke feelings of ambition in the
audience.

● Logos
○ Logos is a form of appeal that uses logic to connect with the
audience.
○ Logos is used in this speech to explain why the space program
will be beneficial to the nation.
 ○ Logos is the primary use of appeal used in this speech.

Rhetorical devices
1) Allusion is the reference to another speech or famous phrase.
“ All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great
difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with
answerable courage.”
In the tenth stanza, the speaker uses a particular phrase quoted by
William Bradford in order to build his argument on the exploration of
space.
Here’s another Example:
“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die
on Mount Everest, was asked why he wanted to climb it. He said, "Because it
is there."
The reference of George Mallory who died in the process of climbing Mt.
Everest, is the intention of creating inspiration. As he climbed Mt.Everest for
the fact that “It was there” similarly to the fact that space is there and we
must climb/explore it to gain knowledge and insights.

2) Parallel Sentence Structure is the repetition of a chosen grammatical

form within a sentence. “ There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict
in outer space as yet.” If we take a look at this sentence used in the fifteenth
stanza, a construction ( no…) is used in one half of a sentence, making use of
parallelism.

3) Hypophora is a common technique where the speaker asks a question and

then answers it.
The speaker makes use of this technique.
“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may
well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the
Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
He answers this question by saying: We choose to go to the moon. We
choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because
they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to
organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that
challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

● Anaphora:
Example:
“And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while
some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be
done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this
platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this
decade.”
- The repetition of the phrase “It will be done” at the beginning of each
sentence is the anaphora used here. This is a strong way of emphasizing
their determination and how they’re being persistent working towards
their goal of landing on the moon.

● Eponym: Using a famous person’s name to convey an idea.

● Meiosis: Understating a point (opposite of hyperbole)