Rhetorical Analysis Of John Green's Speech

John Green made the right decision by opening his speech with a story. Even so, his delivery techniques could use improvement. For example, within the first thirty seconds Green activated his PowerPoint presentation by turning his back to the audience, and pointing the clicker directly at the screen. Within the first minute of his speech Green also stuttered, and added the filler word “uh” in unnecessarily. Green continued on with an inward tisk about a minute and seventeen seconds in. I counted twelve “uh” and “uhms” throughout his entire speech. Once Green transitioned into the next portion of his speech he signaled the topic change by using a transition word, “So, I was a really terrible student when I was a kid.” Even though Green did an …show more content…
Green anticipated that he would be speaking to adults, which is why he wore a suit and tie. At the same time, Green also anticipated that his younger audience members in the online community might watch his TEDTalk later on. He decided to balance out his suit and tie by leaving his shirt untucked, and wearing sneakers. Green was trying to appeal to both of the demographics in his potential audience. Relating to your audience can be difficult if you are working with a diverse set of individuals. Nevertheless, if you appear natural and dress similarly they will be more accepting of you. This is called stylistic similarity, it’s the fact that we tend to closely identify with individuals who look similar to us (Rothwell, 57). Posture and poise are also important aspects of a speaker’s appearance. For the most part Green’s posture was good, but he kept the hand that held his clicker at his side the entire time. If he had used both hands when he made gestures it would have appeared more natural and relaxed. While Green spoke he also paced back and forth, his feet were doing a little