A Rhetorical Analysis Of Mother Teresa's Nobel Acceptance Speech

A Rhetorical Analysis of Mother Teresa’s Nobel Acceptance Speech: Final Draft
This world holds an interesting paradox: poverty exists even in the homes of the wealthy. The poor are everywhere, not only in the homeless across the street but in the nursing homes filled with those who, though they may have a home and food, are lonely and forgotten. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, shares with her listeners that loving and serving the poor, whether within our homes or on the street, builds peace in society. In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mother Teresa persuades the audience using an affectionate tone, emotionally appealing stories and quotations from Scripture; but while her sincere appeals to pathos are successful, her heavy use of religious doctrine to support her ideas risks weakening her message for those who oppose her views.
Mother Teresa conveys a message of peace which is inseparable to who she was. Known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, she was a Roman Catholic Albanian nun dedicated to loving and serving the poor. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order whose members shared her calling to serve the destitute in the slums of Calcutta and throughout the world (Pettinger). In 1979, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work, and on December 10th she gave her Acceptance Speech in the Aula of the University of Oslo, Norway (“Mother Teresa - Acceptance Speech”). The audience of a Nobel lecture is usually