Weekly writing 1

On 2008 August at the Democratic NAtional Convention, Michelle Obama delivered a speech to support her husband Barack Obama as a U.S. President. Her speech was powerful and moved audience's heart. The reason of her speech to be succesfully persuasive, is due to her choice of style.

Use of repetition is one of her stylistic choices. In the beginning of the speech, Michelle used the phrase of "I came here as..." many times. This technique is same as the one used in the famouse Martin Luther King's speech. In his speech, King constantly repeated the phrase "I have a dream...". Repeating a phrase not only makes speech easy for audience to follow, but also gives good rhythm and impact. Like King, Michelle kept her speech simple, rythmical, and powerful by using repetition. As a result, audience easily followed her, and did not forget what she had said.

Other key style that makes Michelle's speech successful is use of vocablaries. Througout her speech, she did not use any professional vocabraries such as politic or economic speciality terms. Instead, she used simple words that everyone understands. If she had used professional words, her speech could not be succesful becasue the audience will not able to understand what she is talking about. Morover, she used casual words alot. An example is "My dad was our rock". Instead of just saying "My dad was a great man", which is usually been used, her casual vocabrary gave more impact on her speech.

Use of joke is also one stylistic choice. When Michelle talked about the first time she met Barack Obama, she said "...even though he had this funny name,...". The use of joke could be sometimes risky. If a joke was extreme or excessive, the speech will be inappropriate and sometimes lose its seriousness and credibility. However, in Michelle's speech, the joke created positive impact and made a closer relationship with audience. For the joke to be successful, she made a joke that everyone will agree with. The name Barack Obama is not common name and most of people will agree if someone call it funny name. When audience and speaker agree on something, it created a connection between them. Michelle and audience's agreement on opinion for Obama's name made connection between them. When audience finds connection to their speaker, they gained affinity to Michelle and as a result, good relationship born.

The reason her choices of style made her speech persuasive is come with her understanding of audience. In other words, Michelle's speech became persuasive becasue she knew her audience, and therefore, she could use right styles for them. She used repetition becasue she knew that the audience had difficulty to follow long speech. She said "May dad was our rock", not "My dad was great man", because she knew about young populations in her audience. She used joke becasue she knew the audience is mostly Americans, and loves jokes.

In conclusion, her understanding of audience and her right choice of style for the audience is the key contribution to her persuasive speech. Her repeated phrase gives her speech a good rythm, and her audience could easily follow. Casual vocablary was used becasue she knew about young audience. She used joke becasue she knew that Americans love joke. All styles she chose gave good impact, connection between audience and good relationship with audience. Also, becasue she used right style for right audience, her speech became persuaseive. Right stylic choices for right audience: this is the conclusion for analyzing ultimate skills which Michelle Obama used in delivering her persuasive speech.