Rhetorical Analysis Of Oprah Winfrey

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At the 2018 Golden Globes Awards, Oprah Winfrey, a former talk show host, actor, and businesswoman, received the Cecil B. DeMille Award. After being introduced by Reese Witherspoon, she acknowledged the significance of becoming the first black woman--and the 15th woman overall--to receive the award ever since it was first handed out in 1952. She delivered an invigorating, powerful, and impassioned commemorative speech that began as a personal reflection and ended as a call to arms against sexual harassment. Skillfully blending and employing appeals to pathos, parallel structure, and an encouraging, candid, and hopeful tone, Oprah Winfrey successfully inspires women to speak up against men and to resist oppression.
To amplify the message of …show more content…

Due to the strong, negative connotations of such words, it may upset or perturb the audience and cause disturbing images or experiences to erupt subconsciously. This actually strengthens Oprah’s argument because by painting such a gruesome reality that causes feelings of repulse, the audience becomes more likely to accept or prescribe to her overall message and position on such topics. Furthermore, through these negative experiences, Winfrey manages to evoke feelings of connectedness to the victims of sexual harassment or oppression that make up a large portion of her audience. These listeners may feel relieved at the fact that someone understands their struggles and therefore, are more emotionally …show more content…

She expresses gratitude “to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like [her] mother, had children to feed, bills to pay, and dreams to pursue.” The similar grammatical structure of this sentence introduces balance, places an equal emphasis on all the items within the list, and clarifies ideas through repetition. In addition, it creates a steady cadence that makes the line more memorable to the audience. Oprah uses parallel structure throughout her speech, as most speechwriters do, however, she only uses parallelism when she wants to emphasize or highlight a certain set of ideas that play a pivotal role in conveying her message. Additionally, Oprah employs balance, a type of sentence that uses parallelism for both grammatical structure and meaning. For example, she claims that “[women are] our athletes in the Olympics and [women are] our soldiers in the military.” The use of balanced syntax in this sentence stresses the idea that women are universally employed, from the Olympics to the military, and that they are a prevalent figure in society. This furthers Oprah’s message and argument against sexual harassment because she indirectly stands up for these nameless women who have been oppressed and introduces the idea that women are more than their gender. To further her message of equality for women, she

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