Greta Thunberg's Speech Analysis

📌Category: Speech
📌Words: 865
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 08 September 2021

Text A is a speech presented by Greta Thunberg in her visit to the UK Parliament in April of 2019. In this speech it was mainly discussed the underestimation of adults towards young activists and the great damage that climate change has on the environment. Greta Thunberg constructs a powerful and persuasive message to her audience through the use of rhetorical questions, anaphora and logos. The message she is trying to convey is for her adult audience to stop underestimating young activists and to take awareness of the dangers that climate change has on the environment. 

The rhetorical questions are presented in the speech by Greta Thunberg in order to present a tone of irony.  “Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on?”. These rhetorical questions done by Greta Thunberg represent her need for her audience and common public to take into serious account her warnings about the damage that climate change and other life threatening phenomena have on earth. She uses a tone of irony when asking if her english is okay, by doing this she refers to the people commenting on her accent and not taking her arguments with as much seriousness as other activists. These rhetorical questions also signify her not wanting to be ignored any longer, she wants the population and massive pollutant companies to make a difference in the world before it’s too late and her warnings turn into nothing but unheard comments.  The impactful use of rhetorical questions represents the dominance that Greta Thunberg has over the language that suggests irony and seriousness; she focuses on creating a persuasive and just as impactful message to share with her audience.

The use of the specific repetition, anaphora, done by Greta Thunberg in her speech represents the emphasis she desires to make on her adult audience for hiding the effects of climate change and other life threatening phenomena from the younger generations to come.  “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.”Greta Thunberg uses anaphora on multiple occasions because they connote the feeling of guilt and regret to her adult audience. By using the impactful word “you” alone, at the start of her phrases, she creates a much stronger and close feeling to her audience since it feels it’s being directed at each and every single adult that listens to the speech. Additionally, by making the sentences short and cutting it creates a sense of direct scolding towards the public. Greta spreads a persuasive and impactful message to her audience by the use of anaphora, which makes the statements more direct and firm.

This speech presents the persuasive use of logos in order to validate Greta’s arguments and to demonstrate that these life threatening phenomena are not a hoax ,but in fact, very real. “Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.” In this speech it can be found a myriad of credible information that supports Greta’s point. The reason why she decided to add some legitimate information without being too specific is because her main point was for her audience to realise that these phenomenons are actually happening at the moment and the ultimate outcome is not far from right now. She decides to appeal to the audience’s logical perspective because it’s very likely that the audience will bring more awareness to this issue. It’s well known that if the audience is presented with impactful information, they are more likely to take action.  Another reason why she might have wanted to add this information is to make her message more credible and to seem more dominant in the subject, this creates a similar effect to the one already mentioned because she will be seen as more liable in the future. The attentive use of logos by Greta’s end was a persuasive move, which creates an effect so overwhelming that the audience feels the need to bring awareness and act up about the issue presented. This crafts a much more persuasive message to her audience. 

In synthesis, Greta Thunberg had this speech very controlled and asserted dominance over the subject she speaks about. She wanted to promote a message for adult’s to stop underestimating young activists' messages and for the general public to stop undermining climate change and other similar phonemes in order to create awareness about them and to form a solution.  Greta Thunberg decided to share this persuasive message through the use of rhetorical questions, anaphora and logos, among other ones. The powerful use of rhetorical questions was evidenced by short and cutting sentences which conveyed irony.  Anaphora was used wisely in order to create a strong feeling of guilt and remorse to her audience. Finally, the use of logos in order to demonstrate that this phenomenon is real and to make herself look more liable in this topic was executed flawlessly. There is no doubt in my mind that the execution of this speech was done in the most impeccable way possible, Greta Thunberg was able to successfully reach her goal of crafting a powerful and persuasive message in order to raise awareness of this issue which haunts us daily.

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