Analyses of President Obama’s Speech

Good Morning respected Teacher, and my fellow students. We will shortly be discussing, the analysis of a speech, recently delivered by the American President, Barack Obama, after Nelson Mendela’s death. A transcription of the speech, has been provided to you, and you can hear an audio clip, of it, on the following link: http://www.obamadownloads.com/mp3s/mandela-speech.mp3 In this speech Obama makes use of a number of ways to achieve the various purposes of the speech, which is to praise Mandela as a person and a leader, win the hearts of South Africans, put forward the benefits of Mandela’s struggles, and to connect races across the world. To begin with, Obama, aims to and effectively wins the goodwill of the South Africans. He begins the speech by thanking the South Africans, on the behalf of the world for sharing Mandela with the rest of the world. This is a great compliment to the South Africans as it whets their national appetite, telling them again, that a great man lived among them, a man whom the world admires, and it is due to him that the world is thanking them today. To maintain the goodwill of South Africans, Obama, continues to praise them and their country throughout the speech, calling their land, a ‘beautiful land’, and speaking of how Mandela’s struggle and triumph, was the struggle and triumph of the South Africans. This continues throughout the whole of the speech, with Obama ending it with, ‘God Bless the people of South Africa’. The American President has certainly won the hearts of the South Africans. Obama praises Mandela too, as Mandela is the patriot of the speech. He bestows Mandela with praises like, ‘a giant of history’, and goes on to describe Mandela, as a man of ideas and a man of actions., praising Mandela for his practicality, and for his determination to his cause, for which he