“No matter what path you choose, no matter what dreams you have, you have got to do whatever it takes to continue your education after high school”. This is the message that Michelle Obama, the first lady of the United States of America, is trying to spread through her speech to a large group of students at the DC High school at Columbia Heights Education Campus in Washington. She is invited in the occasion of an education conference where several other important persons are also going to speak.
Her speech is a mixture of an encouraging speech as well as a political speech. The reason why I say that it is also a political speech, is because she wants the students to take an education. And this is of course something that will be good for the US, because educated people and knowledge are important for the country. The problem in the US is then, that they have gone from a 1st place in graduation to a 12th. And this needs to be changed.
But most importantly taking an education is also something that is good for the students, and this is especially the message she is trying to spread. She wants them to take responsibility for their own life’s, and she wants to encourage them to take an education, because by doing that they will give themselves the best opportunities for doing well in life. As she says, “once you have completed your education, you will have the foundation you need to build a successful life”.
But the speech is not only about taking an education. You could say that overall it is about encouraging the students to always follow their dreams. Because no matter where they come from, no matter what other people say and no matter how difficult it looks, they should always keep working and chase their dreams. And then their dreams might eventually come true. I guess she wants to remind them that the US is the land of opportunities.
And Michelle herself is actually a proof that hard work will eventually be worth it. She has taken an education, worked hard, gone through a lot of difficult times, but has come out successful on the other side. And as she says “I was willing to do whatever it took for me to go to college”, and “I worked hard to get the best grades I could in all of my classes”. This is then part of what has brought her to where she is today, and she wants to encourage the students to do the same. So because of her personal story, it is clear that this is also a personal speech. She is talking about something that means a lot to her, and therefore she is very subjective. She also says “I set my sights high”, and she wants the students to do the same.
In the speech she speaks in a neutral style. And since she is the first lady of the Unites States, I believe that you would often expect her to speak in a formal language. But I think she has chosen to speak in a neutral language, because she wants to get down to the same level as the students. She wants to make sure that they understand her, and she wants them to feel that she is talking directly to them, instead of feeling that she is just some fine lady who they have nothing in common with. So by talking in a neutral language, she makes them feel more comfortable with her being there, and that makes them listen to what she has to say, and makes them hear and understand her message.
And in order to make sure that the students accept her message and find her reliable, Mrs. Obama does throughout the speech use a lot of ethos and pathos. The ethos is then used to appeal to the students emotions. She does for example say that they should follow their dreams, and always keep working hard no matter how difficult things looks. Another example is when she says, “When people told me I was not going to cut it, I did not let that stop me. In fact, I did the opposite”. And she then wants the students to do the same, to fight for their dreams.
The pathos is then used when she tells her own story, and she actually says, “I want you all to know that I am speaking from my own personal experience”. As mentioned earlier she then tells how she has herself managed to climb from the bottom and all the way to the top. She comes from a poor family, but by working hard in school and taking an education, she has managed to become an important person, she has managed to make her dreams come true. And by doing this, by telling her own story, she makes the students trust her, listen to her message, and believe in it.
But she does also use a little bit of logos, in order to talk to the students logic. This is when she tells them that it is important to take an education, which is something that is quite obvious. And it is when she uses numbers to substantiate her theories. An example is, as I have mentioned earlier, when she says that “a generation ago, we were number one in college graduates. But over the past couple of decades, this country has slipped all the way to 12th”.
Furthermore she does of course only talk positive about education, since she is invited to speech to a group of students at an education conference, at an educational institution.