Two Australian Speeches

"The completedness of a speech relies on the contribution of the parts to the whole"
Choose TWO speeches and argue how the structure of each contributes significantly to your understanding of the speech as a whole. An orator’s ability to utilise speech structure permits them to not only convey their ideas efficiently, but also to help achieve a social change and improvement. This notion of social change is at the heart of any successful speech. The idea of “parts to the whole” is shown in both Paul Keating’s Funeral Service of the Unknown Soldier and Margaret Atwood’s Spotty Handed Villainesses. The structure and language of a speech are important aspects as they let the orator provide their argument in an effective way and thus bring about a social change in a number of ways that are pertinent to the audience and context. Paul Keating’s speech structure allowed him to have a positive impact on the audience, not just with the commemoration ‘service’ but also with the ideas of honour and remembrance. I found some aspects of Keating’s speech to be interesting in the way he set it out; purely from a structure point of view, he provides the negative arguments and thoughts first, before dispelling these thoughts. This allows Keating repel the critics of his argument whilst ending on a ‘positive note’ and have the audience go away thinking about Keating’s argument rather than the opposing argument. This idea of ‘why rather than why not’ is common throughout Keating’s speech. “This Unknown Soldier is not interred here to glorify war over peace… or men above women; or the war in which he fought… The Unknown Soldier honours the memory of all those men and women who laid down their lives for Australia.” Keating uses anaphora to list all the pessimistic arguments at once, and then dismisses them with his own positive argument. This ‘stray from the norm’ (providing the for, followed by the against arguments), allows Keating to better place the audience’s focus on the commemoration and honour of past soldiers, which is his main purpose. Furthermore, Keating picks the right moment to use powerful language in his speech. There is a distinct change in the first 4 paragraphs when compared to the rest of the speech. The first 4 paragraphs are quite formal and serious, packed with statistics. Soon after, however, Keating begins using strong emotive language “a mad, brutal, awful struggle”, which brings the audience’s focus to thinking about the impact of the war on the country as a whole, which ties in to his idea of patriotism, and the ANZAC legend of ‘mateship’. I personally believe the way Keating has structured his speech gives him the ability to persuade the audience that the reason for the service and the Unknown Soldier himself, is to honour the dead, and to emphasise that the soldiers contributions will not be forgotten. Margaret Atwood’s speech is much less formal than Keating’s, but some of the parts of the speech follow a structure that allows her to challenge and convince her audience to change their own views, which is her overall goal. For example, Atwood begins consecutive paragraphs with a number of rhetorical questions. “What kind of something?” “How do I know this?” and “What is a novel anyway?” These constant rhetorical questions are used to challenge the audience’s views, whilst the remainder of the paragraph serves as the response. Combined within these responses are metaphors, anecdotes, allusions and colloquialisms, in order to provide Atwood’s personal reflection, and connect with the audience. This connection is made to help convince the audience of Atwood’s views on the questions. These 3 paragraphs are essentially an embodiment of Atwood’s thesis, that women have been halted from being expressed to their full potential in literature. Additionally, and not dissimilar to Keating’s speech, Atwood then engages in a sort of ‘process of elimination’. The anaphora of the phrase “Novels are not…” shortly after her rhetorical questions allow Atwood to dismiss the negative views that she thinks some critics may be having over what novels are. She is, in my opinion, defining novels, by first defining what they are not (although Atwood herself said “novels are ambiguous and multi-faceted” and so defining them is nigh impossible). This tangent over the process of writing and authoring did not directly relate to her main idea of the quality of women (or lack thereof) in literature, but it did provide some criticism she believes is warranted for the quality of some of the literature of her time. I believe that Atwood’s speech, although fairly informal, is structured in a way that allows her to emphasise and provide to the audience her ideas, and the focus of her ideas is to promote a change in the way people think, i.e. a social change. Both Keating and Atwood use their speech structure so that they can convey their ideas, and thus, influence a change in the audience. Both speeches contain parts that differ immensely from each other, but they all help to serve the main purpose. I believe both speeches would have influenced their audience’s views, and brought about a social change in society, as they are structured in such a way that it allows them to challenge their audiences. The depth of the language and speech structure used in both Keating’s speech and Atwood’s speech is, in my opinion, impressive and effective. Both orator’s convey their ideas well and attempt to change societies views, both of which are crucial to any quality speech.