President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech started with “This is America’s day”. The newly-inaugurated American President used this to remind the audience that they were still one united, indivisible entity, “America.”
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The speech was a clearly persuasive speech with the singular aim of uniting Americans to rally around their famous desire for global leadership and stability. Overall, I feel empathy and hope could be felt throughout the speech, centered around unity.
The readability of the inaugural speech was quite high; all literate listeners will understand the entire speech. This was expected because rising anti-intellectualism means that political speeches are best written in straightforward language. This is an excellent feature of this speech as it would have helped him connect better with non-supporters.
He generously used unifying words like “we”, “us”, and “unity”. This indicated that he was trying very hard to unify a country that has been sharply divided in the past four years. While acknowledging this division, his tone was undoubtedly conciliatory. A key example was where he mentioned that “enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward.”
President Biden’s very consistent use of active voice means he was not only persuading people, but he was trying to stir them into action. He wants his supporters, and all of America, to take the necessary steps towards unification and reintegration into the global scene. The speech had a positive tone and placed a lot of emphasis on America and what makes them great. This appears to assure listeners that America will remain great, without the now-familiar negative rhetoric. He was laying down hope for a peaceful future.
There is no gainsaying that it was a well-written speech (duh, they have some of the world’s best speechwriters). He used alliterations, such as in the phrases: “a time of testing”, “a sting of systemic racism”. He also used a significant amount of repetition to drive home his point. A good example was when he denounced the Capitol Hill insurrection. He repeated “Here we stand” and “not ever” to applause.
While his style is different from that of his erstwhile boss, Barack Obama, he is also a good speaker. He used pauses well, his tone and inflection were okay, and he articulated his words well enough. For his age, he did very well. His body language was open and receptive. He was serious but not sombre, hopeful but not unaware that it’s not yet Uhuru.
He made several references to his religion and his Catholic upbringing. This implies that he recognises the deep religious divides that currently characterize America. Thus, he made a conscious effort to appeal to all people of the Christian religion, asking them to rally round and support him following the ideals they hold and share. In speeches, sincerely appealing to your audience’s sentiments wins all the time.
It is instructive to note the speech’s mild language, in sharp contrast to those of his predecessor. He was careful not to alienate anyone, so he did not use exclusionary words whilst maintaining that, indeed, they were better together as the United States of America.
We at Carnation Consults look forward to an era of positive, unifying and hope-inspiring speeches.
Overall, the message was simple: healing and hope; strength and unity.
President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech started with “This is America’s day”. The newly-inaugurated American President used this to remind the audience that they were still
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