Oprah Winfrey is a well known figure from popular culture. Recently, at the Golden Globes, she was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement. In her acceptance speech, Winfrey spent very little time describing her story. Instead, she focused on the developing “#metoo” movement. She uses multiple rhetorical techniques to develop her speech into one that would be discussed in classrooms and media throughout the country weeks later. One of the primary rhetorical techniques that Winfrey uses to engage her audience is her sentence structure, the diction and syntax. In the third paragraph of her acceptance speech, she uses her words to call those involved with the assaults as “tyrants and victims”. These words allow those victims
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She describes how she is “especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories”. With these words, she allows the listener to feel supported and commended for speaking up and allowing the world to realize what tragedies they have endured. In her 5th paragraph where she describes the story of Recy Taylor’s abuse, she states that “[s]he lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men”. With these words, she encourages the audience to feel remorse for the injustices that too many people have endured. She follows these words with the simple phrase “their time is up. Their time is up”. By sparking feelings of anger in the audience, she allows her subsequent words to have a greater impact and a sense of justice for those “brutally powerful men”. In her concluding paragraph, Winfrey utilizes her metaphor for a new day “on the horizon” to allow the audience, whether victim or supporter, to experience hope. She allows the audience to experience hope for a “new day [that] finally dawns”, one where victims are encouraged to share their stories, tyrants realize their atrocities, where women and men work together to “take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me too’
She describes how she is “especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories”. With these words, she allows the listener to feel supported and commended for speaking up and allowing the world to realize what tragedies they have endured. In her 5th paragraph where she describes the story of Recy Taylor’s abuse, she states that “[s]he lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men”. With these words, she encourages the audience to feel remorse for the injustices that too many people have endured. She follows these words with the simple phrase “their time is up. Their time is up”. By sparking feelings of anger in the audience, she allows her subsequent words to have a greater impact and a sense of justice for those “brutally powerful men”. In her concluding paragraph, Winfrey utilizes her metaphor for a new day “on the horizon” to allow the audience, whether victim or supporter, to experience hope. She allows the audience to experience hope for a “new day [that] finally dawns”, one where victims are encouraged to share their stories, tyrants realize their atrocities, where women and men work together to “take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me too’