Speech Writing: Part 3 =)

Watch a clip of Joe Biden's inaugural speech and consider the following:

What persuasive techniques does he incorporate?

What is the message of his speech?

What was the message of Biden's speech?

What was persuasive about his speech?

How could it have been more impactful?

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now. A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II. Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.

In another January in Washington, on New Year’s Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the President said, “If my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it. My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this.

But the American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.

In what ways is her poem persuasive?

What persuasive techniques does she use?

What is the message of her poem?

What made Gorman's poem impactful and persuasive?

What was the message of her poem?

Can Gorman's poem be considered a speech? Why or why not?

What impact does form/medium have on the audience?

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West. We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.