Rethorical Essay on Oprah’s ‘golden Globe Awards Speech”

Rethorical essay on Oprah’s ‘Golden Globe Awards Speech”

The world has suffered great oppressions through its journey towards today. Many have felt the suffering of slavery, war, rape etc. Many who have withstood some of the ugliest thing life can throw at you but still maintain hope for a brighter morning - even during the darkest nights.

This is just some of the things Oprah Winfrey discusses in her Golden Globe Awards Speech. She starts out the speech by taking the audience back to 1964 where she was watching the Oscars where an African American had just won the Oscars for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She emphasizes how much it meant for her as a little black girl to see an African American be praised like he was and it almost makes you the chills upon reading. Then she says she had realized at that moment, some little girls were watching as she became the first black woman to be given the award.

While she says this, she refers to her female audience and especially the black community as it has faced so many struggles throughout the years. Even though a lot of the speech is directed towards women and the black community but also refers to the men and women who have been challenging her, inspiring her, and made her to who she is.

Throughout the speech we stumble upon a sea of rhetorical devices with the first one starting in the sixth line where she uses opposites during her flashback watching the Oscars. “I remember his tie was white, and of course his skin was black...”

The use of magnificent words comes to show as to trying and creating a certain atmosphere in the room. “it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them” and especially where she expresses how proud and inspired she felt by all the women who spoke their truth. “so, I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault.” While trying to create this certain atmosphere of “Go women!” She uses ethos by bringing up her own mother who as a black woman also had been working hard to feed children, bills to pay and dreams to pursue makes her more trustworthy combined with the fact that she is such an influential black woman who speaks for an entire society. She always uses the rule of triads while doing so “- Like my mother - Had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue.

When Oprah addresses who these women whose names well never know she uses anaphora to make it emphasize that the suffering wasn’t exclusive to some but that every black woman suffered. “They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They’re domestic workers and farmworkers; They’re working in factories and they work in restaurant and they’re in academia and engineering…”

When speaking to the female audience she makes use of pathos by telling af story of Recy Taylor who was abducted, blindfolded and raped by six armed white men and afterwards threatened to death if she ever told anyone. She explains how it was reported to the national association for the advancement of colored people and Rosa Parks had led her case and together they sought justice. But the six men where never persecuted, because justice wasn’t an option for black people in the era of Jim Crow. At this point she speaks to the women and at the same time subtlety to the men “She lived, as we all lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. And for too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up.” She emphasizes that a new era has begun by using another triad of repetition.