Paper One Textual Analysis – Political Speech
The text “Blood, Toil, Tears and
Sweat” takes the form of a speech as it follows the stylistic conventions of a
speech, with the use of rhetorical devices to further the speaker’s appeal. It
was delivered by the, at the time, newly elected British Prime Minister (Winston
Churchill) on his first entrance to the House of Commons with the presence of
the outgoing one (Neville Chamberlain).
The target
audience of the speech is primarily the British population as they were the
ones who selected Churchill as their new prime minister and Churchill returning
the favor by opening the speech with n insight on the work he has done so far
as the new prime minister. However, the main purpose of the text is to rally up
the British people’s support for Britain in the earlier stages of the war as
Churchill emphasizes on how victory is their main aim, as well as to build up
the people’s confidence in having Churchill as their prime minister.
Churchill
starts the speech by highlighting what he has done since being in office, this
includes the forming of a new war cabinet, the appointment of individuals in
key positions within the government. Churchill then states how the forming of
the new administration was necessary and how he did it in a nick of time and he
also addressed the public to have confidence in the new government. At this
stage, Churchill transitions to his main part of the speech as he emphasizes on
how vital victory in the war is to Britain and sticks with this subject till
the end of his speech. Based on the speech, Churchill sees himself as an
influential individual that will motivate Britain to its victory and he wants
the public to see this as well. So it can be deduced that Churchill’s words of
motivation is the theme of the speech.
There are different
elements in the text that affects the overall tone of the text. The sudden
shift in tone halfway through the speech was resulted by a change atmosphere
within the speech. At the beginning, the tone was rather terse. For the most
part, Churchill was only listing what he has done and what is to be done by the
parliament in chronological order. As opposed to the tone being preachy with
lines like “Friend below the Gangway, have to be made here at home” and
charismatic as Churchill starts using the word “we” more frequently in order to
signify unity in Britain and get his message across on the second half of the
speech. There is also a lot of repetition of the word “victory” and how
important it was for Britain’s survival towards the end of the speech. As a
whole, Churchill was often straight to the point in both parts so the overall
tone would be urgent and the mood of the text would be empowering since this
theme of victory is the overall basis of the speech.
As
previously mentioned, the overall purpose of the speech was to appeal to the
audience and build up credibility towards the author in order to influence
Britain to victory. Churchill builds up credibility in the beginning of the
text as he describes the work he has done for the parliament as quoted “A
number of other positions, key positions, were filled yesterday, and I am
submitting a further list to His Majesty to-night.” and this appeals to the
reader otherwise classified as ethos. Moving on with the persuasive technique,
Churchill starts to include rhetorical devices with different effects. For
example, Churchill uses an anaphora alongside a climax and parallelism, “but it
must be remembered that we are in the
preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many other
points in Norway and in Holland, that we
have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that
the air battle is continuous and that
many preparations, such as have been indicated by my hon.” The use of climax
was to emphasize the importance of the events going on at that instant in order
of importance and therefore making it more appealing to the reader in order to
engage them with the reader. Churchill does this over and over again, this time
with the inclusion of a rhetorical question. “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all
the strength that God can give us; to
wage war against a monstrous tyranny,” the effects of the rhetorical device
and question is the same as the previous indication. As previously mentioned as the theme of the
text, the word victory is often repeated. “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road
may be; for without victory, there is
no survival.” it is implemented inside an anadiplosis in order to again
emphasize the importance of victory for the Brits.
Throughout
the text, it is clear that Churchill wanted to emphasize victory and inspire
the British people to glory as indicated in the previous paragraphs, starting
with ethos to build credibility, then further developing the message with
rhetorical devices and engaging the reader with rhetorical questions. Churchill
was very successful in getting his message across and very appealing as the new
British prime minister.
