Michelle Obama’s Speech From Low to High
The structure of Obama’s speech last night was fascinating. It began with a low rhetorical style, i.e. she used a lot of plain talk. But slowly over nearly 2,200 words the rhetorical style grew like a crescendo. You can get an interesting look at the text and video side by side at The New York Times.
Consider the first paragraph:
As you might imagine, for Barack, running for President is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig.
This is not your typical opening statement for a political speech. She picks up the conversation after her brother’s introduction. That’s an interest maneuver because it tends to highlight a major point of the speech: to (re)introduce the Obama’s to American as a family.
Much deeper into the speech, we begin to hear the first steps up the ladder of rhetorical style until we reach her “It was strong enough” anaphora. Her delivery was smooth enough to make the transitions up the rhetorical ladder fit the mood of the text.
Her Diction 5.0 score should be no surprise. She scored high in “variety” and “commonality.” This suggests a big tent of shared values–exactly the kind of tone necessary to fight the disunity master narrative CNN was pushing so hard to sell last night.
Tags: journalism, rhetoric, politics
