Michelle Obama’s Speech
Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention focuses on historical situations that influenced the creation of her speech. This paper will focus on the audiences, situation, her reputations, the tradition of the speech, and the rhetorical purposes and problems of her speech. Michelle has numerous targeted audiences in anticipation of the election ahead. She has also received good and bad comments from the press. Not only does Michelle Obama use all of the above well in her speech she also uses important historical references that help accomplish the purposes of the speech.
Michelle Obama has numerous audiences that she targets. One of the audiences that she is trying to target is African Americans by bringing up both Barack and her family heritage and referencing Martin Luther King Jr. She also targets women because she is one herself, by referencing her brother, her husband, her daughters and her parents, in the first three minutes of her address it is a means of suggesting to the general public that she is no different from other women across the country who care first and foremost about their families. She talks about how she was “raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker, and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me” and how Barack was raised by “grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves” to target the lower class families. She makes references to the military and their families, by stating “the military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it”, so she can gain support from them to show that the Obama campaign wants to end the war. An effort to...