Rhetorical Analysis of President Obama's Inauguration Speech

He also uses the literary device of parallelism, which means that he uses similar wording in his syntax to make a point, “I have used the words "they" and "their" in speaking of these heroes. I could say "you" and "your" because I am addressing the heroes of whom I speak.” In addition, he asks a rhetorical question, a question not meant to be answered aloud but to be pondered silently, “You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?” Asking this rhetorical question gets the audience involved in his speech. These are both useful techniques because they both relate him to the audience and keep the audience’s attention by inquiry. These are all strategies that lead to the same outcome, to persuade the audience that he is best fit to be the leader of this nation.

Obama’s speech conveys he cares about what happened and that he takes it seriously by connecting with the people’s emotions. He says bostonians are tough and he says they picked the wrong city to mess with. This makes the people feel really inspired. He shares a short story from the bible at the beginning of his speech which makes the crowd emotional.

President Obama, like all Presidents before him, delivered a farewell address to the United States on January 20, 2017. As he stepped down as President he was eloquent and it was as clear as ever that he is a master of oration. Obama will go down in history as the first Black President as well as a strong orator who had the ability to captivate an audience through his use of ethos, pathos and logos amongst other rhetorical devices. His farewell address is a perfect example of Obama’s mastery of discourse as it is chock full of oratorical devices. Obama’s message to the American people and to the rest of the world is that it is essential that we maintain a sense of what it means to have a democracy and that in order to maintain peace and

This speech was presented in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention by a politician running for the United States Senate at the time, also known as Barack Obama. In this speech while Obama was still running for his campaign for the United States Senate he also supported John Kerry as he was the party’s presidential nominee for that year's election. This is one of Obama’s most historical speeches he has ever given and he did this by using several language deceptive devices such as euphemisms, emotive language, and persuasive language in order to keep his audience attention so that he could get his main message across to the whole country of the United States. His message was that the only way to fix the problems in the country is to

During the 2008 election, Barack Obama had a lot on his plate to deal with as he was in the running for becoming the president and his speech could have made or broken his campaign. Throughout his speech, he went to address the topic of racial inequality and how it had broken America and divided us in a time where we really needed to not divide, but come together. He also made this speech to address the comments Reverend Wright, his pastor, had claimed about him and put all unease to rest. Throughout this speech, he wished to create a more perfect union for the USA and his speech held words and phrases that spoke out to everyone who heard his speech then or even will hear his speech now in the present or in the future.

As 44th President of the United States of America, Barrack Obama, in his 2009 Inaugural speech, includes references from our founding fathers on how if we stick to our values and work together, we will be successful. This expresses what his plans for his presidency are, and what he hopes to accomplish within his time in office. He addresses the nation and the rest of the world as well.

Throughout his speech, Obama uses words and phrases such as “the task before us”, “our nation”, “We the People”, “for us”, and “we will defeat you”. All the phases and words involve not just Obama, but the entire nation coming together as one. Including the audience to the commands and promises he puts fourth. With his speech, and using the rhetorical device of ethos, Obama can steer the audience into the direction that they oversee the nation and that they have the power and control to change the nation for the better.

In the political world, political figures must be a good speaker, connect well with their audiences and be able to persuade them. These figures have been using rhetoric style forever, going all the way back to George Washington. With rhetoric they are able to utilize the key essential parts of speaking and writing to persuade an audience. President Obama is a prime example of a good speaker who uses rhetoric to motivate his audiences. In 2007, Obama began his journey to become the United States President. During this journey Obama used many different rhetorical approaches and devices that allowed him to gain enough delegates and votes to become the democratic nominee and later president. President Obama’s inaugural speech shows just how good

Former President Barack Obama in his first Inaugural speech emphasizes the issues in America and calls “them” to action. Obama’s purpose is to inspire and rally the American people. He adopts a humble and mindful tone in order to open the eyes to his fellow Americans. Obama uses metaphor, allusion, and anaphora to help him to make connections with the American people and to help get his point across. Obama for instances uses metaphors as a way to help the audience understand the problems there are in America.

On July 27, 2004, Barack Obama arguably made his greatest speech, “The Audacity of Hope”, at the Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. All the way through his piece, Obama focuses on connecting himself to Americans. However, Barack Obama was a US Senate candidate for the United States president, and in making this speech, uses this connection to raise his reputation rather than to simply amuse the audience. Throughout “The Audacity of Hope” speech, Barack Obama implements three main devices to raise his political popularity: abstract language, repetition, and structure.

Obama begins his speech with his own and America’s racial history to highlight the importance of unity in anticipation of his election. He opens with the preamble to the United States Constitution (“We the people, in order to form a

President Barack H. Obama has been always using rhetorical strategies in his political speeches. He used these strategies to present important pointes and views of his in front of public. Delivering points and views properly and logically got him to be the president in the first place. President Obama used mostly ethos and pathos yet some logos to deliver his inaugural and the state of union speeches. Being that, he was able to reach audience emotionally and make the speech flow efficiently while he preserved his credibility. Each speech has own audience that differ from the other. In the inaugural speech the audience was the public and therefor the speech was short and used sort sentences that are easy to understand. On the other hand, the state of union speech audience was mostly the congers members and therefore the language was more specific and filled with political terminology. Both speeches will be discussed upon context and using ethos, pathos and logos consecutively.

This structure that Obama produced was very fluent, it went from point A, to point B, then to point C. He guided his audience smoothly and logically. By the time the speech was over, many were possibly on his side of the argument because it was that persuasive. Obama successfully structured his speech to argue his point of view and persuade his audience to feel the same.

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren”.Stating that statement it brings power into what he is saying. Using small phrases such as more gives the audience with a repeating message in their brain. Parallelism emphasizes his goal of trying to persuade his audience to vote.By repeating the word more than once he wants the audience to move

Obama uses many references to King’s and Gandhi’s works, as both advocate peace and love. Yet Obama explains how even through peace and love may be a solution, war still may need to be an option when most needed. Obama builds up his argument to why he believes war would be a realist tactic. He uses analogies such as “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.” showing how violence at last resort may be needed to be used. This tone continues for a while until Obama starts conspiring a realist strategy to obtaining peace. This tone shifts to a more demanding yet passionate tone. Obama lays down three ground rules to a lasting peace concluding of: alternatives to violence, removing nuclear weapons, and international laws. To show his inner passion and faith to his argument, he uses rhetoric such as syntax. Many of his sentences are either very long such as: “All will have access to peaceful nuclear power…” yet continues the rest of his sentences really short such as “I am committed to upholding this treaty.” This type of structure is used to bring more attention and passion toward his argument. Also figurative language is used multiple times such as when Obama explains how the “world stand together as one.” This brings more of an overall togetherness and appealing factor toward his argument, rather just implying that the world is great working together, this language uses imagery to portray a more togetherness in the world. Obama uses this type of demanding tone until the end of the speech, where he instead of sounding demanding he starts standing hopeful. This would make sense, since all of his points were laid out, now would be the time to endorse the points given. Obama starts talking about hope, love and faith, using powerful diction such as “..but the love that they preached..” and a compelling amount of logos, “..if we lose faith..we lose our moral compass.” These type of rhetoric