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Obama Delivers Speech Like A Symphony Analysis

Decent Essays

According to Rice, a political speech is “any oral presentation that sets forth a proposal of a political position, particularly one in which the speaker hopes to influence others” (Rice 2007, 18). For this reason, a good speech is essential for a politician. Reynolds in his presentation “Obama delivers speech like a symphony” describe what should be a great speech. He claims, that “there are different kinds of symphony, but a symphony — like a good speech — takes you some place. It has a shape, it has forms. Fast/slow, loud/quiet, all of which may be separated by a short pause or silence. A symphony has different movements and forms, and yet it has a harmonious whole. Symphony has much in common with story as well. A well-crafted and delivered speech and a powerful symphony, …show more content…

Epithets
According to Galperin “the epithet is a stylistic device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning in an attributive and logical meaning in an attributive word/phrase or even syntactically used to characterize an object and pointing out to the reader, and frequently imposing on him, some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception an evaluation of these features or properties” (Galperin 1977, 143).
Epithets usually describe people, events, features and other things. They are necessary to strengthen emotional expression. Politicians (and not only) use epithets to strengthen their arguments and to create emotional atmosphere. Furthermore, the use of the epithets attracts attention of the listeners. They can make the speech soften or worsen and create a particular atmosphere. Epithets can have positive, neutral and negative connotations. The speaker in order to create a jolly atmosphere he/she will invoke the epithets with positive connotation. Epithets with negative connotation can be used to show how bad or difficult the situation is. Neutral epithets just add some additional information without creating any

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