Tony Blair War on Terror
Rhetorical analysis of Tony Blair’s speech on terror
On July 7th, 2005, four British Islamist men detonated fours suicide bombs. As well as killing themselves, the four bombers took 52 civilians with them and injured over 700. The following week, former Premier Minister Tony Blair, held his speech on terror. This paper will give an analysis of the rhetorical situation of the speech, a rhetorical analysis and an interpretation.
Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister and president for the Labour Party at the time the terror incident happened. As the Prime Minister he needed to react fast in order to condemn the attack. The British citizens were not happy with Great Britain participating in the war in Iraq, and the people will wonder if this is the result of interfering. With this speech Blair does not only have make the British people feel united and safe. He also has to justify and convince the British population that they did the right thing. This is the biggest terror attack in London. A year prior the Madrid citizens experience a terror attack, and three years before that there was the terror incident in New York. Therefore this issue is not just national and Blair’s speech on terror has to reach out to more than just the British population.
The speech was held at a Labour Party conference, so the primary audience is the Labour Party members, while his secondary audience is the people. This not only the British population; the speech is directed to the people of the world. "Over the past 12 years, Al-Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26 different countries, killed thousands of people, many of them Muslims." (Lines 24 – 26, page 55). When Tony Blair chooses to include the Muslim victims, he includes the whole world and makes his statement approaches more than the West.
In his speech Blair uses the contrasts “we” and “they” a lot. “They” are the people who follow the ideologies of the fundamentalist Islamic terror movements and “we” are the
On July 7th, 2005, four British Islamist men detonated fours suicide bombs. As well as killing themselves, the four bombers took 52 civilians with them and injured over 700. The following week, former Premier Minister Tony Blair, held his speech on terror. This paper will give an analysis of the rhetorical situation of the speech, a rhetorical analysis and an interpretation.
Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister and president for the Labour Party at the time the terror incident happened. As the Prime Minister he needed to react fast in order to condemn the attack. The British citizens were not happy with Great Britain participating in the war in Iraq, and the people will wonder if this is the result of interfering. With this speech Blair does not only have make the British people feel united and safe. He also has to justify and convince the British population that they did the right thing. This is the biggest terror attack in London. A year prior the Madrid citizens experience a terror attack, and three years before that there was the terror incident in New York. Therefore this issue is not just national and Blair’s speech on terror has to reach out to more than just the British population.
The speech was held at a Labour Party conference, so the primary audience is the Labour Party members, while his secondary audience is the people. This not only the British population; the speech is directed to the people of the world. "Over the past 12 years, Al-Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26 different countries, killed thousands of people, many of them Muslims." (Lines 24 – 26, page 55). When Tony Blair chooses to include the Muslim victims, he includes the whole world and makes his statement approaches more than the West.
In his speech Blair uses the contrasts “we” and “they” a lot. “They” are the people who follow the ideologies of the fundamentalist Islamic terror movements and “we” are the