ESSAYS

Essay on The Language Used in Speeches to Motivate and Persuade People

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Introduction

Analysis of Texts

Single Text = Speech made by Sir Winston Churchill, 1939

Classification of Texts

This genre of this text relates to spoken prose in the form of a prepared speech. This speech appears as a monologue. It is not intended to be spontaneous but may be read by the speaker, delivered using expressive features in the form of gesture and facial expression.

Pragmatics [language in use]

In 1939 the Nation did not want another war. The British public responded to the news that they were at war as 'carrying out a duty' and met the news with stoicism and regret. That is the background to, not merely the speech Sir Winston Churchill made, but to Churchill being called back from retirement as he was a powerful leader. This shows in the power of his speech. Churchill did not have to win the people - he already had them behind him. Churchill knew he was called back to lead the country to victory and he commiserated with the people because he understood how they felt. This rapport comes through clearly in his speech along with the charisma through which he held the will of the people.

The speech opens by re-stating the position, justifying the need to enter the war. Continuing to commiserate it then re-asserts why the particular course of action is necessary and finally acknowledges that he and the Government are aware how much it is going to cost the British people in terms of commitment but, at the same time, re-affirms the British spirit and finishes with a reassurance that victory will prevail.

Discourse Structure

Lexical cohesion has been described by Halliday and Hasan (1976, Page 8) as being a "semantic relation between an element in the text and some other element that is crucial to the interpretation of it" whilst Eggins (1994, Page 101) writes of cohesive devices that have "expectancy relations between words". As Halliday and Hasan explain, this enables a text to be analysed according to its cohesive properties (Halliday and Hasan,1976, Pages 4 & 27), realised through 'lexical priming' (Crystal, 2003, Page 162). Nunan (1993, Page 59) suggests "coherent texts are distinguished from random sentences by the existence of certain text-forming, cohesive devises". These have been identified by Halliday and Hasan (1985, Page 48) and constitute the focus of this analysis.

Halliday and Hasan's (1976: page 4 and 27) model of cohesive devices as outlined below: 1) Reference 2) Substitution 3) Ellipsis 4) Conjunction 5) Lexical cohesion

Reference

This group include those words that come within the framework of being used as direction pointers: e.g. demonstratives, together with the definite article; personal pronouns (including the exophoric referent 'you'), along with relative and interrogative pronouns. 'It' has also been incorporated within this section being classed as a personal pronoun referent.

Baker defines the function of cohesion as:

"the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text. These relations or ties organise and, to some extent create a text, for instance by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation; it connects together the actual words or expressions that we can see or hear". (Baker,1992: 180).

Many texts exhibit a coherence through their cohesive devices which "…might be expected to occur most frequently… might also be expected to exhibit the most fruitful network patterns... [and the] types of cohesion which are global in nature might be expected to exhibit the most common patterns" (Stoddard, 1991, Page 32). Examples of 'Reference' appear to provide excellent 'global' examples within this particular text as exhibited below:

This table shows the strong cohesive bond between "lexical items…[that]…cohere with a preceding occurrence" even with different referents (Haliday and Hasan, 1976, Page 283), a feature Hoey describes the '"study of patterns of lexis in text" (Hoey, 1991, Page 10).

Taking this a step further, Hoey suggests an order of importance, from simple repetition to complex repetition and, similar to the above table, creates a matrix to reveal the most cohesive repetitions within a given text (Hoey, 1991, Page 83): the more repetitions, the higher the significance within that text. From this matrix Hoey identifies the most cohesive sentences - those most central to the theme of the text (Hoey, 1991, Page 265).

Following Hoey's classification, Churchill's speech is attempting to convince the public that the hardships they are about to endure are for the sake of peace, with evidence of moral value, moral convictions, defending all that is most sacred, the rights and liberties of the individual.

This speech uses very emotive language: faithful and sincere; highest moral value; comradeship and brotherhood are indispensable; moral conviction. The moral fibre is implied in this speech with reference to resilience; strength and energy; not be found unequal; strength of the British Empire and the French Republic; not unworthy; the greatness of our country.

Endophoric/Exophoric Reference

Exophoric reference relates to a source outside the actual text in order to create a sense of purpose and meaning: the writer incorporates this concept to increase the effectiveness of that piece of writing. The majority of this text is exophoric whereby a text's meaning is intended to be interpreted through identifying directly to the receiver [the audience] as an outside referent.

It is interesting to note that this text is not intended to extract a potential response from the reader. Churchill is not asking his audience anything: he illustrates how firmly in power he is through the total absence of the personal pronoun 'you' which usually projects a message within a text directly at the receiver. However, right at the beginning of this text Churchill establishes a rapport with his audience by using 'we' to not only introduce the implied writer (i.e. the stoic British public) but to identify with them himself [Churchill was known as the 'great British bulldog]. In this manner the writer has implied a permanence: implying that, no matter how tough it was going to be, Britain would be victorious.

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