OBAMA'S SPEECH

   Hello all!!!! Have any of you guys seen President Barack Obama's speech to students yet? If the answer is no, then stop reading and go watch it, then you can come back and read the rest of what I have to say! It is kind of long so give yourself some time to watch the entire speech. I literally watched it just a few minutes ago, and I thought his message was presented fairly well. The first thing I noticed when watching the speech was his voice and cadence. He makes his audience want to listen by not being monotonous, but using a lot of voice inflection while asking his audience to continue their education with as much of a positive attitude as possible. His tone seems serious and sincere, like he wants the best for his audience. Obama uses a lot of gestures in order to get his voice across. His gestures emphasize a certain point he wants to get across. A few times, he actually points at the audience to get the point across that he is talking to all the students out there.

  As I listened to his speech, there were many times that I heard him refer to the audience saying 'you' or 'we'. Saying 'we' captures ethos saying that he is there for the students and that he wants the best for all of them. As he refers to the audience as you, he gets the point across that he is talking directly to each one of the students, and that their education matters not only to them, but to the fate of our country as well. As president Obama was speaking, he used a variety of syntax at some points he varied from long sentences to short sentences in order to give the audience a break. He even listed off a few items and took pauses in between them as if they were the end of a sentence. For example, Obama states, "And it means that you take some risks once in a while. You wonder. You question. You explore. You color outside the lines every now and then." This gives the audience a break from his long and windy sentences. As seen in the example above he uses repetition/anaphora to emphasize that 'you' as a student can make a difference. Obama repeats the word you a million times, well I guess not that much, but you get the point. He repeats tons of pronouns like we, you, they, and much much more to show that the audience has a lot of supporters.
    Obama uses more rhetorical devices in his speech! He uses parallelism as he talks about the students' role in the country, "America needs your passion, your ideas, and your energy right at this moment." Obama uses this parallelism to really motivate the students and get them to want to pursue their education with optimism and high hopes.
  As I listened to the president, I thought if all the ethos, pathos, and logos he used. Most of the time, I saw him as attempting to gain credibility and ethos by showing the students that he was once just like them and that he understands what he they are going through. This is especially apparent when Obama talks about his ethics class and what he was like as an eight grader. He tries to be relatable by starting off his speech with "hey," instead of a more formal "good evening." Ethos is present whenever Obama is speaking because, after all, he is the President of the United States of America which probably makes him one of the most credible sources because he knows what he is talking about. He is a very educated man. Obama also uses some logos when he talks about facts about education and how everyone needs an education because 60 percent of jobs require more than a high school diploma. These are all logos because they are logical duh :)
  Obama ends his speech with motivational examples of students just like everyone else who have made a difference. He explains about one student, "Jake Bernstein, a 17-year-old from a military family in St. Louis, worked with his sister to launch a website devoted to community service for young people.  They’ve held volunteer fairs, put up an online database, and helped thousands of families find volunteer opportunities that range from maintaining nature trails to serving at local hospitals." After he explains about these amazing students he states that he needs all of us students to pitch in. He leaves us on this note because he wants us to end with the thought that we CAN make a difference in our community and it is our job to do so.
  Third grader Bryce Rees listens to Obama's speech :) he is adorable!