Rhetorical Analysis Of The Girl Who Silenced The UN For 5 Minutes

Today I am going to Analyze the speech titled ‘The Girl Who Silenced the UN for 5 Minutes.’ This speech is delivered by a girl named Severn Suzuki and she was addressing the Plenary Session at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio Centro, Brazil. She gives this speech on behalf of the people in the world who don’t have a voice and for future generations to come. She wants people to realize that certain problems in our world are not getting better and that we need to take action. In her speech she uses rhetorical devices such as pathos and repetition to create a more compelling argument. When presenting her speech Suzuki mainly uses pathos to convey her message. One use of pathos is when she says, “On behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard.” By using this towards the beginning of her speech she draws the audience in by saying she is speaking for not just her self but for other that do not have a

Towards the beginning of her speech she repeats the phrase, “I am afraid” to show her audience how deeply she believes in what she is saying. It helps to convey how truly terrified she that our environment will soon be destroyed due to pollution.She then goes on to repeatedly say, “You don’t know how” to make her audience realizes that the problems she is speaking of, such as poverty and pollution, are not new things. That she has to speak today because they have been around for so long and still no one has fixed them. Finally, she repeatedly uses the phrase, “I’m only a child yet I know.” The repetition of this statement serves many purposes. Firstly, it shows the adults listening to this speech that if even she, a child, realizes that thing are wrong then we need to start taking action to fix it. It also shows the audience that she really does have a deep understanding of the topic and she realizes what she is asking people to do and how difficult it could turn out being for