Rhetorical Analysis Of Malala Yousafzai's Speech

The first Pakistani or Pashtun winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was Malala Yousafzai at the age of 17, making her also the youngest person to achieve this prestigious award. Malala Yousafzai, the girl known for being shot in the face by the Taliban, has not let anything or anybody take her down in her mission to once and for all end inadequate education for children all around the world. She advocates and urges the world to come along with her on her mission as she accepts her award at the Nobel Peace Ceremony of 2014 in Oslo, Norway and speaks of equal education opportunities, equality for women, and “peace in every corner of the world.”

Malala begins her speech by saying first in Arabic, “Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim” and then translates
She says that though she is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, she and her brothers “are still working on that.” Malala continues on to dedicate her award to the “forgotten,” “frightened,” and “voiceless” children, and uses antithesis of “the last time” throughout the entire speech to emphasize that she is not going to stand back anymore and watch the injustice continue on in the world. Repetition is used heavily in her speech as she also uses it when she constantly asks the rhetorical question, “Why is it…?” in terms of the world being able to create wars and weapons but not be able to educate every single child. Malala refuses to accept the concept of “basic literacy” anymore and promises to fight for each child’s right to receive secondary education. A big, contributing factor of her speech is when she says that she is not the only one who is fighting, and she begins to tell the story of many girls and not only her personal experiences, but also theirs. She says that not only is she Malala, but she “is the voice of those 66 million girls” who are deprived of education and shot down just because of their gender. As Malala says her speech, she looks around the room and makes eye
I, myself am from an Indian family and growing up in America I realized that I do not get to do the same things as other girls around me. But Malala has not let cultural pressure stop her from fighting for girls’ education and continues to make an impact on the issue of the lack of education. She has enlightened me and millions of other people of the growing problem around the world of the stark difference of education between first and third world countries. I take a stand with Malala as she has inspired me to fight the continuous cycle of poverty in war-stricken countries that kids cannot get out of because of lack of education and resources. The way Malala spoke so confidently yet humbly at the same time gave the audience and I a sense of awe that though she has seen and been through so much, she has just used that to get stronger and motivate the people and world around her. Unlike most of the children on this planet, I have not experienced what it truly feels like to be oppressed and not being given a fair chance to take on the world, and I think we all take that for granted living in America. Malala has exhumed this issue to the world and shown that there is a way out and that way out can only be done if we all stand with her.

Being on the Nobel Peace Prize stage proves that Malala has begun to make a difference in the world. Her hopes and dreams of solving the problem of inadequate