How Winston Churchill uses language to engage with his audience

How Winston Churchill uses language to engage with his audience
In this essay I will be analysing and discussing how Winston Churchill manipulates features and functions of spoken language to achieve specific outcomes in different situations and how speech and interaction patterns vary with his different contexts. In Churchill’s speeches, he uses language to create a sense of unity and motivation while subtly adding some words of wisdom and witty phrases.
Churchill’s short quotes have a very contrasting tone to his public speeches. His short quotes mainly have witty catchphrases and are said in a jokingly manner while his public speeches are more formal. Churchill’s public speeches present him as a sophisticated and motivational character.
During wartime, the ability to show passion and to boost the morale of an audience is of great importance. Churchill shows throughout his speeches that he has this ability when he uses inclusive language to create a rapport with his audience. ‘We have before us’ indicates a situation, but that ‘we’ have not yet got there. The situation may be overpowering for any single man, but because of Churchill’s use of inclusive language it is a situation that can be handled together. The more people who join the war effort the lesser the burden has to be for each man, woman and child. ‘Our cause’, once again reiterates the feeling of an equally shared burden. Most noticeably in Churchill’s Finest Hour speech he uses an immense amount of inclusive language.
The patriotism shown by Churchill in all of his speeches is strong and motivational and satisfying for his audience. ‘Superior quality of our ships’, additionally in most of his speeches he uses the great power of the British Empire as a compelling argument for both the World Wars. ‘Battle of Britain’, Churchill called part of the war which is another satisfying factor. This gives the British citizens another thing to be grateful about because the ‘home field advantage’ is now theirs.
Churchill’s acknowledgement of just how important religion can be is vital. Referring to religion in speech can be risky as words can be deemed offensive if not chosen wisely. But if words are chosen wisely it can be used to captivate the audience and make remarkable and powerful phrases, particularly as people at the time had strong Christian beliefs. At a time of conflict, religion can be used to connect with the audience as religion is something to follow. He depicts Britain as a ‘Christian civilisation’. This is not only stirring, patriotic and prejudiced for the audience but it has a powerful contradiction of irony. This is due to the fact that protestant Christianity did not originate from England, but Germany.
Verbal propaganda, something Churchill had the ability to use including statements about the British Empire emotionally and intuitively drove the British population to participate in the war effort. ‘The British Empire and its Commonwealth countries will last a thousand years’, not only is this statement decisive but it is also a very inspiring comment for the audience. This was key to his speech as it turned the House of Commons to his side.
A characteristic that Churchill took precise advantage of was his wide use of superlatives. ‘Their finest hour’ not only gives a legacy to the citizens of Britain but there is something to be proud of in ‘finest’ as your can’t get better than the finest. ‘Superior quality’ reiterates that and these superlatives reinforce Churchill’s statements and lifts morale.
The British Empire was by far the most powerful contributing aspect that Britain could give to the war effort. Churchill emphasizes this by saying the three types of fight ‘we will fight them by sea, land and air’ in order of strongest first. ‘Nearly everything has been foreseen’ implies that Churchill can predict the future and the outcome is already known to him but has left doubt by saying nearly. But for some people this was all they needed to be encouraged to sign up to join the war effort.
Another of Churchill’s characteristics is the way he explains dismal and complex situations in a simple way that it seems that all is fine. The core of the sentence, ‘if we can stand up to him…may be free… and the life of the world may move into broad sunlit uplands’ is happiness as this draws his audience’s attention form the word ‘if’.
Churchill’s further understanding of rhetoric language and questions gives his audience a chance to think about them rather than being ‘force fed’ with information. ‘You ask, what is our aim?’ is an example of this. He pauses for a while, which gives his audience time to think about this. ‘Our aim is victory’ Churchill then says to his audience as if the answer was obvious.
Churchill retained many characteristics and abilities when performing his speeches and I believe that Churchill has put a new meaning to morale-boosting speeches as well as gaining the legacy of one of the most powerful and influential British leader of all time. And the fact that he became Prime Minister after his failure at Gallipoli makes his legacy even more respectful.