Rhetorical Analysis: "the Challenger Address"

Ronald Reagan’s speech “A Time for Choosing” was a very effective persuasive speech that may not have gotten Barry Goldwater elected as president, but it did have a profound impact on the American people. This speech more than likely led to Ronald Reagan’s interest in politics and election as President of the United States in 1981. He communicated facts that may not have been known to the American community and additionally brought into perspective invalid statements that were said about Barry Goldwater. Reagan easily connected to his audience and was successful in convincing people to join his side of thinking through various persuasive techniques.

This essay will attempt to analyze Ronald Reagan’s Challenger address in terms of the rhetorical situation theorized by Dr. Blitzer and elaborated by Dr. Zarefsky in his book Public Speaking. The effectiveness of the Challenger address will be evaluated by carefully identifying and examining each of the four components of the rhetorical situation within the context of this speech.

This speech has meaning, excites emotions and reaches out to all, which makes it a great speech. Although Reagan chooses to ignore his administrations responsibility in The Challenger disaster, he concentrates instead on reassurance of the nation which makes this speech uplifting to the American people.

President Ronald Reagan changed the way society viewed public speaking and politics and continues to make his impact on the world today as his rhetoric serves at the outlines of numerous governmental leaders such as President Trump (Costa). While his speeches occurred over thirty years ago over television and radio, Reagan is still remembered as being a monumental orator in history as his speeches are still highly critiqued in both academic settings and public history (Hayward)(Peters and Woolley). Throughout my paper, I will analyze the rhetorical devices Reagan used that were meant to unite, in order to help readers understand the rhetorical devices used in political rhetoric, which consequently both united and excluded certain people. Understanding past rhetoric of an orator such as Reagan will lead to a better understanding of the rhetorical devices used by political figures and the impacts they

The most obvious way President Reagan delivers rhetoric to his audience is through his own ethos. Ronald Reagan wasn’t just your average president; he was a communicator. Reagan started his career as a sports announcer and continued on as an actor, which led to his later career in state and national politics. By the time President Reagan had delivered his address, the president had been in the spotlight his entire career and was looked up to worldwide. He had established an extrinsic ethos well before delivering this speech. By being the president of the free world, Reagan’s audience

The speaker for tonight’s Muslims in America seminar brought a new aspect or way off thinking when it comes to how non-radical Muslims are dealing with radical Muslims. His delivery and provoking points, helped me better understand how people can convert to radical Muslim. Before attending the seminar I never considered the viewpoint or reasoning’s of terrorist. I found out most radicals are educated, literate and even intellectual. Militants believe in what is called “ooma”, which is translated as church or body. They believe strongly in “ooma” and that it represents an entire body. They view the world as a body with impairments and dysfunction. Tired of political grievance militants begin to feel love and sympathy towards their cause of curing

Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. She uses the strategies of parallelism, pathos and diction to get her message out and to help her reader receive it. And thus Thatcher can convince her readers into believing what she says.

Throughout the 1962 address to the American People about the rising in steal prices, President John F. Kennedy is able to use rhetorical appeals to relate to everyday Americans. His successful use of diction and pathos along with speaking about the pure disadvantages brought about by this change helped in scolding the steal companies while sympathizing to the side of the people.

John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech is certainly one to remember. It’s memorable not for its length, but for the effective content that it beholds. He entices readers by the use of strong rhetoric techniques. His inaugural analyzes style of writing, such as diction, tropes, schemes, and syntax, and applies the concept of it effectively throughout the speech. A reader performs rhetorical analysis to examine how authors attempt to persuade their audiences by looking at the various components that make up the art of persuasion. Moreover, it is most essential to be able to understand the relationship among the speaker, subject, and audience, which President Kennedy adequately exploits in his speech.

Like Severn’s speech Ronald Reagan’s speech: The Challenger Disaster, Reagan has a confident and emotion filled

LGBT representation is a touchy subject, and Amy is one of the few brave enough to explore the topic. However, she left more than a few holes in her argument, biting off more than she could chew. Her position on the misrepresentation of bisexuals in TV was ineffective at persuading her audience, because of her lack of concrete evidence, misdirection of audiences, and contradictory statements.

1. Topic: Tone and the short stories “The Greatest Gift” (1943), by Philip Van Doren Stern (1900-1984) and “Araby” (1914), by James Joyce (1882-1941). 2. Topic Statement: Tone plays a role in the short stories “The Greatest Gift” (1943), by Philip Van Doren Stern (1900-1984) and “Araby” (1914), by James Joyce (1882-1941). 3.

Reagan carefully chose his words during his speech on the Challenger Disaster, using specific pronouns completely changed the way the country received the message. It was initiated when he said, “we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight; we’ve never had a tragedy like this” (5). Later he also stated: “We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun” (7). Reagan’s use of “we” throughout the speech shows the nation that even high figures such as celebrities and political figure, in which Reagan represented both, also feel as the common people do in times of struggle and devastation. Allowing the citizens of America a shoulder to cry on for a dark and challenging time in the history of the country. Towards the end of the text Reagan started to create allusions for the American people to compare the fallen astronauts to. Such as when Reagan stated: “the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it”” (10). Also he makes reference to the religious figures at the end when he says, “”slipped the surly bongs of earth” to “touch the face of God”” (11). Using these allusions, Reagan was able to effectively convince the audience that the astronauts died for a reason and a cause, to expand our knowledge of space and explore what it could possibly contain. In the case that Reagan had not given this speech it could be possible that many people around the world would want to back off from exploring space because it could kill people that attempt to travel into it. But Reagan’s speech was able to revoke confidence in NASA and other space programs, letting moms let their kids become astronauts and not saying no because of how dangerous it could be.

Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Orlando, Florida on March 8, 1983 called, “The Evil Empire.” This speech was intended for the ears of all Americans and is one of the best known presidential speeches ever given. In his speech, Reagan uses multiple rhetorical strategies such as; metaphors, allusions, rhetorical questions, tone, pathos, and uses references from the bible. He talks about all the main points of abortion, teenage sex, drugs, the Soviet Union, and the practice of praying and God in our public schools. His speech was very well written, moving, and extremely influential. This speech shows the president’s belief that the

When defining the Rhetorical Situation, Bitzer (1992) describes it as a network of people, circumstances, objects, and relations that stimulates discussion, which in the suitable context has the potential to alter the situation (p.6). He notes that there are three factors that constitute any rhetorical situation. The first factor is Exigence, which highlights the need to discuss about a certain issue or topic. The second is the Audience, who are the reactors to the topic and are often presented with a certain perspective that aims to persuade them to support the issue. The third and final factors are the