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Michelle PawelaENGL 4100-02: Andvance CompositionProfessor AthonFeb. 23, 2016Rhetorical Analysis: Amy Poehler’s 2011 Harvard Class Day Speech44702802639682For my rhetorical analysis I chose Amy Poehler’s Harvard University Class Day Commencement Address from 2011. I chose this instead of a more formal speech for a few reasons, some of which I will delve into more deeply throughout this paper. Amy has been one of my biggest feminist inspirations for a long time, pretty much ever since she started speaking out for women’s equality and rights. I have always looked up to her as an entertainer, artist, creator, and as a woman. One of Amy’s passions is empowering young women. Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls is an online community she started that highlights the accomplishments of strong young ladies who are making a difference in the world. Amy and two of her friends wanted to bring young women like this together because she is all about empowering the youth of today. Amy is deeply inspiring but also humorous and she proves that women can be both smart, as she is a Boston College grad, and hilarious. The reason why I chose this speech is because of how effectively she uses humor to get her point across. Amy also uses many rhetorical tools in this speech; she effectively uses pathos, logos and ethos to communicate her point, although some more than others. Throughout this paper I will explain how she uses each of these different rhetorical tools in her speech and how this speech worked for her specific audience. I will also talk about how this speech made me feel personally. Amy’s Harvard Class Day speech took place on May 26, 2011. It was a bright and sunny day and she took the stage after a short introduction by two recent Harvard grads. Amy began with a joke and continued on with a little background and a few jokes about writing this speech. The humor she used in the beginning of this speech is a tool to break the barrier between the audience and the speaker. Clearly her jokes made everyone feel more at ease and more prepared for the rest of her message. Through her speech she talked about her past in acting and comedy, discussed her time in New York and Chicago and mentioned, briefly, about how all of those experiences lead her to where she is today. 101603148330The first element of rhetoric that I want to talk about is ethos. As I mentioned earlier, Amy effectively used many different rhetorical elements in her speech. Ethos is the element that addresses the credibility of the speaker. There are many ways that Amy’s speech used ethos. In the very beginning of her speech, Amy talks about how she is a Boston College grad. Since her audience was a large group of college students and college grads, this established her credibility among this group. This is also important because she graduated from a prestigious school, at times she pokes fun about how Boston College is not as prestigious as Harvard but it is still a very respectable school. “I'm truly, truly delighted to be her at Harvard . I graduated from Boston College. Which some call the Harvard of Boston. But we all know that Harvard is the Harvard of Harvard. And you can quote me on that.” (Poehler) If Amy had not mentioned that she was a college grad, she may have lost some credibility with an audience of Harvard grads, so by telling them this in a fun and lighthearted way, she gained their trust. Another way in which Amy used ethos was when she mentioned her past experiences. The events that she explained helped her audience to understand why she is a trustworthy person to listen to for honest and helpful life advice. She used her experiences from getting started as a young woman in comedy up through her time at Saturday Night Live to explain how she used different techniques to overcome fear and nervousness. Even though people in the audience may have not been able to relate to these particular experiences (at least not yet) she was establishing a basis for them to understand her. “If you are scared, look into your partner's eyes. You will feel better. This advice has come in handy and it would often be something I would think about when I would perform on Saturday Night Live. Live television can be very nerve-wracking and I remember one time being nervous, looking into the eyes of the host and feeling better. I should point out I was wearing a chicken suit at the time. The host was Donald Trump. He was wearing a bigger, more elaborate chicken suit. I looked into his eyes, I saw that he looked really stupid, and I instantly felt better.” While this passage from her speech is really fun and entertaining to listen to, it also tells a story about how her time at Saturday Night Live makes her a trustworthy person to listen to. She has dealt with a lot of nervousness and fears during her various life experiences and now she has the tools to overcome it, and she wants to share those tools with her audience. 35814005632450Amy also uses pathos in this speech. Pathos is the part of rhetoric that appeals to people’s emotions and for this reason I believe it may be the most important element. There are a few different ways in which she uses pathos. I will start is the most obvious, comedy. Amy is a comedian and a comedy writer, so this is her sweet spot. Amy’s use of humor in her speech made people happy and feel good and relaxed, since that is what laughter does to you. She weaved bits of wisdom and insight with comedy and the result was wonderful. One example is when she was talking about how you become more fearful as you grow older. “You never know what is around the corner unless you peek. Hold someone's hand while you do it. You will feel less scared. You can't do this alone. Besides it is much more fun to succeed and fail with other people. You can blame them when things go wrong. Take your risks now. As you grow older, you become more fearful and less flexible. And I mean that literally. I hurt my knee on the treadmill this week and it wasn't even on.” Comedy was a great way for her to use pathos in her speech. She also used pathos in a very different way. At one point she was talking to the audience about what we fear as we are growing up. Her generation had to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic while our generation had to deal with the repercussions from the attacks on 9/11.This is such an important event in our more recent history and everyone in the audience was able to relate and think back to where they were the moment they heard or saw what had happened in New York on that day. “You were young children when you watched?planes hit the World Trade Center. You quickly understood what it was like to feel out of control. Your formative teenage years were filled with orange alerts and rogue waves and unaccomplished missions. For my generation, it was AIDS. We all grow up afraid of something. Your generation had to get used to taking off your shoes at the airprot. My generation had to get used to awkward PSAs from Boyz2men telling us to use protection. But during those tough times, we realized how wonderful it felt to be part of a group.”I believe that Amy effectively used pathos in both of these situations although for very different reasons. She wanted to make people laugh and at the same time she wanted to make people feel more ready for their futures. There are many more examples of pathos used in this speech but I do want to mention the other elements of rhetoric that are visible within this speech. The final rhetorical element in this speech that I will be discussing is logos. Logos is least used in this speech but since it focuses on facts and logic, I feel there are some things to point out. Amy doesn’t have to use much logos in this speech, in fact she uses logos to set up a joke in the beginning of the speech: “But the class of 2011 did not invite me here to tell jokes. They invited me here to talk about the recent tensions between oil traders regulators of the commodities futures trading commission. I'm sure we all read the?New York Times?this morning which posited that there may be a complex scheme that relied on the close relationships between physical oil prices and the prices of financial futures, which of course, as we all know, moves in parallel. Hilarious.” Clearly Amy knows she is a comedian and people aren’t excepting to hear hard hitting facts and figured from her, so what she did here is use logos to work as pathos, which is her strong suit. Poehler did not need to use logos in her already very convincing speech about growing up and life. A speech like this does not require logos in the way it requires ethos and pathos. 42373556132830I personally felt this was a very effective speech by Amy Poehler. She was entertaining, sincere and funny all while promoting her message. What was her message though? I will insert a quote from her conclusion that I feel perfectly sums up her speech: “This is what I want to say: When you feel scared, hold someone's hand and look into their eyes. And when you feel brave, do the same thing. You are all here because you are smart. And you are brave. And if you add kindness and the ability to change a tire, you almost make up the perfect person.” The purpose behind Amy’s speech is, it is okay to be afraid, it is ok to be unsure, but there is always someone else there who probably feels the same way and it is okay to be vulnerable and reach out for them. I believe this was a really powerful speech for this audience. These are recent Harvard grads who are going to be in high demand with powerful jobs but that doesn’t change the fact that they are recent college grads just now getting into the “real world” and that is scary for anyone. This speech made me feel more comfortable as well, since I will be a college grad within the next few months. That is one of the reasons I chose this particular speech. I adore Amy as a person and as an activist, but I also love this kind of commencement speech. I feel more empowered now, as I am sure the grads in the audience did here. Works CitedPoehler, Amy. "Harvard University Class Day Commencement Address." Harvard University Class Day.?American Rhetoric. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <;. ................
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