Rhetorical Analysis

Pascual Lewis

Professor Plummer

ENGL 110

28 October 2021

Rhetorical Analysis

On the second day of the United Nations 4^th World Conference on Women, Hillary Clinton gave a speech about gender inequality. The conference was held from September 5, 1995 to September 15, 1995. At the time of the conference, Hillary Clinton was the first lady of the United States to the 42^nd President, Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s speech was given in front of tens of thousands of men and women that attended the conference to discuss and make a change for gender inequality. Clinton gave her speech to inform and persuade the audience why women need to be treated as equals and explain that if women were given equal opportunities everyone in the world would benefit. Clinton persuaded her audience by incorporating anaphoras and tone into her examples that made connections with her audience.

Hillary Clinton was able to hold the audience’s attention and persuade them throughout her entire speech by connecting to them. One of the most common rhetorical strategies Clinton used to emotionally connect to the audience was anaphoras. On the second page of Clinton’s speech, she uses an anaphora to connect to the wide variety of people in the audience and to explain how women are helping all around the world. Clinton begins each sentence in the paragraph with, “I have met”. She followed the phrase with an explanation of a woman creating change in their country. For instance, Clinton says, “I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping to build a new democracy.” Clinton keeps using the phrase, “I have met”, to talk about women from Indonesia, Denmark, India, Ukraine, and America. Since Clinton’s audience is so diverse, she is connecting to most of them by using examples from multiple countries. All the examples of women from different countries persuaded the audience that women have been an important part of every country. Another use of an anaphora is at the end of the second page. Clinton used an anaphora to describe the way women are being valued. Clinton explains how women are not valued by the world and says, “not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture”. This is an obvious emotional connection to most of the audience because the attendees of the conference are aggravated that women are not valued in society. This anaphora is also informing the audience that women are not appreciated for what they accomplish.

The tone was also a common rhetorical strategy that helped persuade and inform the audience and at the same time make an emotional connection to the audience. One place that tone was used is at the end of the first page when Clinton mentions that some people are doubting the importance of this conference and that women are not needed for progress. Clinton answers the naysayers by replying with a confident tone. She says, “let them look at the women gathered here today.” Clinton can say this with confidence because the audience is full of teachers, policymakers, business owners, and other well-established women that are making changes every day. Clinton’s tone is important because it tells the audience that women are a strong influence on the progress of many countries. Another instance of tone being used is in the last paragraph of page three. Clinton begins the paragraph with a disheartening tone and uses words like, tragically, violated, vulnerable, to describe how woman are being mistreated. Then, at the end of the paragraph Clinton switches her tone to a more demanding tone to display that action is now going to be taken. Clinton says, “it is time to break the silence.” Switching from a disheartening tone to a demanding tone persuaded the audience that something will be done about the way women are being treated around the world. Additionally, Clinton’s tone helped her connect to the audience by letting them know that she understands the feelings they are having about the inequality of women.

Hillary Clinton showed her audience that women are a powerful tool for the progress of every country and cannot be belittled. Clinton used the repetition of phrases and her changing tone to persuade and inform the audience that women need and will receive equality.

Works Cited

Clinton, Hillary. “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.” 4^th World Conference on Women, United

Nations, 5 September 1995, Beijing, China, Remarks to U.N.