Speeches Flashcards
Lessing- On not winning the nobel prize
-2007 nobel prize for literature winning speech to the Swedish academy and an international intellectual elite, overcomes expectation of a gracious, humbled speech to reveal global disparity in access to education to those it favours most and how it unjustly denies access to the world stage to many.
1) Uses personal accounts to show disparity between 1st and 3rd world education.
• Anecdotes- makes the problem personal and tangible while building her ethos as she has witnessed the disparity first hand.
• Juxtaposition between “A school standing in dust clouds,” and “beautiful buildings and gardens.”
2) While the overall disparity is grand it is books that epitomise the lack of educational access (due to their necessity in its success i.e. power of fiction)
• Enumeration of educational books to show their importance to education, “no textbooks, no exercise books…or an atlas.”
• Together:
- Links to Lessing’s own past, self-teaching primarily through books.
-appeals to the pathos of her 1st world audience, creating a sense of sympathy.
3) Motif of prizes used to illustrate the effect access on the accomplishment of ambitions.
• Extended metaphor of prize winning to recognition and success, “I don’t think many of the pupils of this school will be winning many prizes (speaking of Zimbabwe school)
• Reveals irony of the title of her speech- cleverly using her own award to reflect on those that could not earn one despite their ambition.
4) Finds the greatest flaw in this educational disparity in that the uneducated becoming voiceless on the global stage.
• Evocative language- “books never written…voices unheard”
Response:
Some disagreed, believing that calling for books instead of essentials in 3rd world is misguided but others followed her message that education is vital to the ascension of the 3rd world from poverty.
Brooks-Home in Fiction
2011 Boyer Lectures- prominent australian asked to speak about “idea of home”
-expatriate author
To utilise fiction to portray truth and tell the stories left untold in history, represent them properly (i.e. The women)
Demystifies writing via Extended metaphor of craft, “words are stones and the book is a wall”
(Fact becomes “indispensable framework)
“Someone rises from the grave and begins to talk to me” metaphor “voices of the unheard”
“Well sadly you go to court. You find her there in every era. accused of being a witch…and you will recognise her…her sense of injustice.”
“Pushes…deeper and deeper into the full truth”
Reception: some uninitiated will find the voices she paints too feminist for their era, but just shows injustice once silenced she is unearthing.
Keating- Redfern Speech
Prime minister in redfern, home of many indigenous people in the middle if the aboriginal land rights movement, commemorating 1993 international year of the worlds indigenous people.
Aim: to acknowledge the truth of australia’s culturally divided history and illustrate how a unified future benefits us all (as land rights movement has already began)
1) Imagine if the Shit had Been Done to You
- Doesn’t need to address ethos as he is prime minister
- inclusive, high modality enumeration
- Anaphora of imagine, “Imagine if we had suffered injustice and then were blamed for it.” Rhetorical statement, appeal to pathos
2) Because Change is Good for All of Us
appeal to logos- repels common belief of the time that aboriginals are parasitic to Australian society. -“economic contributors…there in the wars…they helped build our nation”
- culturally “we are beginning to learn …from them”
3) Steps We Need to Make the Change
- We have to give meaning to “justice” and “equity”
- truncates change into small manageable pieces so change feels tangible to the listener “if we improve the living conditions in one town, they will improve in another”
- from there we will “…the practical building blocks of change” like the referenced “Mabo Judgement” and “ATSIC” contemporary aboriginal movements making great strides to show that change has already begun, we just need to accept it.
Reception:
- powerful emotive response from immediate audience in redfern and with many at home, but did not have the action oriented effect Keating hoped for.
- Disliked by political opponent John Howard who toted his view as a “black armband” view of history.
- “still the high-water mark for inclusion”- Behrendt political analyst at SMH in 2012
- However others think without Keating’s speech Kevin Rudd’s official apology to the stolen generation in 2008 would not have occurred.
Atwood- spotty handed villainess
Context: canadian esteemed feminist author speaking to audience of fans.
Aim: Recognition of the need for multi-facetted female characters in fiction, liberating women in fiction and thus in life.
(Fiction circumscribes the role of women)
1) asserts purpose
- “there was a little girl who had a little curl…” To highlight angel/whore split prevalent in society
- “neither age spots nor…youth spots…spot as in “out, damned” Macbeth reference
“Something more than breakfast”
2) Examples why we need this
- “If you think im flogging a dead horse… Galloping around as vigorously as ever.”
- anecdotal evidence “how do i know this? I read my mail.”
3) bc art affects life, and needs to reflect life (versatile relationship between art and life)
-(“influenced how people read, and therefore) what you can get away with, in art”
-“women are tired of being good all the time”/”ladies of great britain… We have not enough evil in us” Dame West
“Note where she locates the desired evil. In us”
Pearson- australian history for us all
Context: 1996 at university of western sydney for academics and visitors (including JOHN HOWARD). Aboriginal land rights movement in years prior
Point: once we unify and acknowledge history we can move beyond guilt and unify the people.
-argument against those that refuse responsibility for their past
1) asserts situation without opinion, while building ethos
- was “taught history at the University of Western Sydney” ethos
- “guilt about Australia’s colonial history is… A hot button issue.”
2) uses white people to assert point to white people that history must be acknowledged and revised properly. But dont be guilty just do the thing.
- Justice Brennan said aboriginals “underwrote the development of the nation”
- politician John Hewson “debate…should never be preferred to…a unifying search for common ground”
(-it should not be necessary “…truth to be distorted in order for white australians to be able to live with themselves”)
Calls on those that are in power to lead the discussion in a responsible unbias manner:
- “black armband view of history”
- ”-“guilt is not constructive”-Keating
- “he might care to read Robert Hughes rather than the opinion polls”
Reception: some were still blinded (or chose to appear so) to the benefits of reconciliation as they believed any acknowledgement of guilt would lead to legal ramifications. However many academics appreciated his well thought out approach, particularly on the international stage where local issues would mean very little compared to universal principles of justice.
