Emma Watson Speech Analysis

The speech given by Emma Watson at UN headquarters, New York City, 2014, was to launch the campaign by UN Women’s, HeForShe. Emma was very appealing and inviting throughout the speech. Since the speech revolves around gender inequality, she brought up solutions to the issues caused by gender inequality through her experiences, research, and goals set out by the campaign.

Watson started her speech by disassociating the word “feminism” with “men-hating” and advanced into how her experiences led her to become a feminist. The speaker, Emma, seemed very timid and nervous at the beginning of the speech but with focus on the root of the topic she gradually became more assertive when recalling how girls and boys were treated differently growing up. She stated how she was considered “bossy” because she wanted to participate in directing her parents plays but the boys weren’t. She confidently pointed out that unlike most women of the world, her life is “a sheer privilege” because her influences did not limit her from succeeding, despite being a woman. She also reminded us that gender expectations and

She uses negative words to reflect the struggles men and women face due to gender inequality while using positive ones to describe the change they will make if everyone fights against it. Her rate of speech remains moderate to slow, pausing sporadically between thoughts and when people applauded. She kept a serious tone, except for when she jokingly says, “Who is this Harry Potter girl?”. Despite the seriousness, the sterner underlines change to more open and encouraging as the speech progresses. Her facial expressions are mostly mobile, matching the topics she is covering and she maintains eye contact with the audience throughout most of the speech apart from when she casually glanced at her paper. She didn’t gesticulate a lot, occasionally holding the speech paper or touching her hands and fingers when she felt