A Rhetorical Analysis Of Obama's Speech By Barack Obama

This speech presented by Barack Obama kick-started his political career, putting him on the map worldwide. We must remember, Obama didn’t start with the name recognition others had, such as Reagan and Trump, Obama had to get the recognition from giving fantastic speeches like this. This speech fits all 10 characteristics of great speeches easily which showed how talented he was as a speaker. This is arguably his best speech which is why we are going to discuss this one in particular. For delivery, Obama was loud, but not too loud to the point where it was distracting, and not too quiet to the point when you couldn’t hear. This helped Obama articulate his words and helped the viewers make out what he was saying. Not only was the physical portion

To add onto this, I’ll dive into the cadence. Obama was very good with his tone. Political speeches could become boring over time when the speaker is monotone or can be not be taken seriously when either the speaker raises his/her pitch at the end of every word or sentence, or the speakers pitch changes at random times. Obama had a nice comforting voice throughout his speech, with no surprising stoppages, which increased the quality of this speech. He did however use stoppages but it didn’t hurt the speech quality. He used them throughout his speech in the form of pauses, something he is known to be really good at doing. Obama in this speech paused several times right before delivering an important message which not many speakers do, and this skill itself made this speech so much better. Obama put emphasis on words he wanted to emphasize making sure that when he emphasized a word, it was the most important word in the sentence with a lot of value. He didn’t emphasize as frequently as he paused, but that 's a good thing because emphasizing words indicate more importance than pauses so using emphasis in moderation is a good thing. Obama used fast, crisp, powerful tones when he concluded an important part