In her eulogy, British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, sends her condolences to the American people over the death Ronald Reagan. She reflects on Reagan’s great personality and complements his work as president. Thatcher utilizes informal but respectful words, parallelism, and contrast to convince the audience of Reagan’s good character, and his importance to America along with the rest of the world.

Thatcher uses a distinctly informal, admiring diction to show her respect and closeness to Reagan, and her agreement with his policies. An example of this informal diction is when she calls Reagan, “Ronnie”. This casual use of his popular nickname shows the American audience that she viewed Reagan like they did, like a friend. With her informal diction, she places herself among the people and reveals that she knew Reagan on a personal level, thus gaining the people’s trust and good will. By describing Reagan with admiring, complimentary words like “cheerful” and “invigorating”, she builds up his positive characteristics. Thatcher’s diction convinces her audience of her sincerity, and raises Reagan’s bright character in the minds of the audience. …show more content…
A case of this was her repeated use of the sentence structure, “Others… He...” to describe the challenges set against Reagan and his eventually victory over of them. For each challenge mentioned, Reagan faced it head-on and overcame it. The repetition of the same structure reveals the strength and determination of Reagan’s will. Another use of parallelism in the beginning of the passage describes Reagan as “a great president, a great American, and a great man” which expresses