One way to analyze writing strategies is to look at the texts of successful speeches. Over the years, I have X-rayed the Gettysburg Address, “I Have a Dream,” and the oratory of Barack and Michelle Obama. I note, for instance, that the former First Lady as soon reminded her audience that “I stay in a residence that changed into built through slaves.” In describing the White House this way, she located the emphatic phrase — “slaves” — at the stop, where it had its best effect. If a speechwriter had written for her: “Slaves constructed the residence I live in,” Michelle Obama could have been within her rights to hire every other.
Oral expression of language precedes the written word using, oh, a gazillion years. And let’s consider that the phrase “rhetoric,” which can be observed in many kinds of expression, once emphasized the spoken word — the usage of public language by, say, Roman Senators for the motive of persuasion. The technique of emphatic word order utilized by Michelle Obama — and Lincoln and MLK Jr. — is advocated using the Roman educator and rhetorician Quintilian over than 2,000 years past, which brings us to sixteen-12 months-vintage Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist who these days delivered a short speech — approximately 500 phrases — to the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City.
I am in no position to decide her scientific evidence. I assume the truth-checkers were on her trail, with no principal corrections insight. Critics at the proper have argued she is a pawn of the left and could not have written any such speech. At least one has gone thus far as to disqualify her because she has Asperger’s Syndrome. Before the speech, I would love to debunk the perception that no teen could have written this textual content. It should be, the principle is going, the work of, dare I say it, AN ADULT. She is nothing more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, speaking English in a foreign accessory. For argument’s sake, let’s say that someone else wrote the speech or helped her write it. If that is a disqualification, then every flesh presser who has mouthed the words of a smart speechwriter deserves to be un-tongued.
I have taught writers at all stages, together with simple, middle, and high school college students. The paintings of the first-rate of these have been wonderful and worth an e-book. In Haslam’s Book Store in St. Petersburg, Florida, I stumbled upon a used anthology called “The Best Teen Writing of 2015.” Inside, I found the work of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards winners. The paintings cover numerous, not unusual genres. Here is a number of the fine nonfiction:
Catherine Gao, 16, San Jose, California:
“I sat on a BART automobile in uncomfortable silence for forty-five minutes a week ago. Thirty other strangers sat around me, each diligently doing the exact equal factor: nothing. Half stared vacantly at the walls of the automobile, stopping each short time to look down at their telephones. The other 1/2 snored lightly with their faces smashed in opposition to the home windows. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear into my seat.”
Maya Lew, sixteen, New Haven, Connecticut:
“The tornado left everything broken but the toolshed. The townspeople plucked slugs off the side panels for days and, later, vintage timber peeled like rotten bananas. River water ripped beyond the edges of the movement; they fixed torn seams with dust and rocks (double knots, triple knots) and pipes from damage under sinks. The sunflowers floated, facedown, river trout half of way to belly-up.”
Jack Tien-Dana, sixteen, Bronx, New York:
“The subsequent day, the health facility transferred my mom to a New York clinic. My father rode with her in the ambulance while my aunt, a semi-well-known style editor and full-fledged diva, drove me domestic with my uncle and cousin. We were on the Westside Highway when she rear-ended a cab. She flew out of the automobile to excoriate the cabbie (note: she rear-ended him) and, for the duration of a lull inside the resulting fracas, she stuck her head in my window and hissed at a cheese-dusted me. I began holding a complete canister of cheese puffs, which jounced and landed all over me.
Don’t tell your mother this passed off.'” I have chosen three young writers who were 16 years old, the same age as Greta Thunberg. I don’t know their backstory. However, I bet they have had adults who endorsed them, from an early age, to perform the three essential behaviors that mark a literate individual: to examine critically, write purposefully, and communicate approximately how meaning is created via reading and writing. Greta Thunberg truly has the same items, magnified by her capacity as a young person to speak to large businesses of adults when the stakes are excessive. Let’s stipulate that a speech at the United Nations is a step up from nailing that college admissions essay.
So, let’s see how and what she did. (My commentary is in parenthesis.)
Transcript: Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday.
My message is that we’ll be looking at you.
(In syntax, we talk about the “variety” and “person” of pronouns. Each designation contributes to the voice of the speaker. In eight words, we get three of them. “My” indicates the first individual singular, showing the writer seizes ownership of these thoughts. “We” is first-man or woman plural, used collectively in the language of hard work union mess; however, it is also used in the language of “We the humans.” She isn’t always on my own. Her remaining word is the second-person plural, “you.” In most instances, this creates the illusion of discourse, the “I” and the “Thou.” But as the object of the verb “looking,” it feels extra ominous here. It’s no longer Big Brother who is looking. But Little Sister.) This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I have to be lower back in college on the opposite aspect of the sea. Yet you all come to us younger human beings for desire. How dare you!
(Short sentences have the sensation of gospel truth. Here, we get a chain of them. She will now not allow her target market off the hook with an extended flowing sentence. Each length is like a hammer pounded at the podium. The target audience can’t see the exclamation mark on the quit of this paragraph, but they can hear it. I discovered that “How dare you!” was uncomfortable to read and hear. I diagnosed, guiltily, with the failed grownups in the audience. Her language is that of an angry, determined, or stern faculty instructor scolding an infant. That inversion of expectation defines her voice.)
