Act: A speech given to United States citizens in order to call to their attention issues surrounding the country that we live in and how they will be handled when Barack Obama is elected President.
Scene: A country in need of change for a better, stronger and more unified America
Agent: Barack Obama, presidential candidate hopeful
Agency: American citizens hoping for a new united America brought on by the reassurance of the best candidate for the job.
Purpose: To unite a group of people ( American citizens) and alert them of the need of a new America, one that will result in choosing a candidate who will unite the citizens of the country by the promise of a new America built upon hope that will ultimately result in change.
Response:
I have never actually viewed one of Obama’s speeches, and after watching this one I was quite impressed with his public speaking capabilities as well as the amount of passion that he had behind everything that he said. I specifically liked when he called upon each one of us as citizens to make a change. This made the speech seem more intimate and personal, it took it to a level of overall concern for each and every one of us as Americans and showed his genuine interest in “fixing” all of the problems surrounding the country to date. I thought that Burke’s Guilt-Redemption Cycle was most clearly used when Obama made reference to 9-11 during his speech. He makes reference calling out people for using it as a tactic to “scare up votes”and “win an election”. At this point in the speech, he is making them and the incident the scapegoat, in order to get rid of guilt, as we have learned occurs within the cycle while speaking in public to an audience.
