Lizzy Velasquez Speech Analysis

Speech Analysis

On December 20, 2013 at a motivational conference for women in Austin, Texas, a woman by the name of Lizzy Velasquez delivered a heartfelt speech on the power of taking the negatives in life and turning them into positives. Velasquez is one of three people in the world that suffer from a rare syndrome that renders her impossible to gain weight. She talks about how because of this syndrome she was ridiculed, bullied and tormented both as a child and as an adult and was once referred to as the “ugliest woman in the world”, but took hold of those negatives, overcame them and turned them into positive goals for herself. Velasquez delivers a speech so compelling and strong witted that conveys a message of encouragement, tenacity and triumph, she believes in inner strength and defining yourself by the accomplishments, character and compassion that one possesses and not by their outer appearance. My analysis will focus on how Velasquez used the strategies of story-telling, inflection, expression, pauses and redundancy to connect and maintain her audience’s interest as well as evoke their sympathy. Employing the three divisions of speech, her introduction caught the audience’s attention; the body of her speech offered the substance of her position and her conclusion reinforced the idea she wanted to portray. (Lucas, pp. 66, 67)

Velasquez opened her speech in a humble tone, soft enough to obviously demonstrate how fragile, petite and frail she was but loud enough to be audibly heard. She spoke about her very rare syndrome and how doctors still don’t know what the cause may be, and how the main symptom of her syndrome is not being able to gain weight and sarcastically added that it actually was as good as it sounded. ...

... middle of paper ...

...ir, how much you weigh or the clothes you wear. She ended with reinforcing her position on overcoming negatives, turning them into positives, and defining yourself. Her last words were; Brave starts here. (Lucas, pp. 198, 199)

Lizzy Velasquez’s speech captured me from the beginning. From the heart wrenching story of how she happened across her being called the ugliest woman in the world, how that devastated her and sent her into questioning why she even existed. (Lucas, p. 343) To the way she decided to choose to be happy, and pick apart every criticism and negative comment and use them as the driving force to strive for achievement. Although she paced her speech so that each word could be heard and understood, at times I found the pace to be a little slow, but I believe that was the purpose as it played a key factor in conveying her triumph over tribulation.