Investigating pragma-rhetorical strategies utilized by American commencement speakers to motivate graduates for managing future opportunities and challenges

Motivating emotions is a critical factor in empowering students to manage the troubles they might face. Educational organizations pay great efforts to employ all the available means that can motivate their students for better learning from early stages until universities or institutes levels. The administrations of some universities and institutes, especially in the United States of America, do not stop there and pay more attention on motivating their students at the graduation parties on how to manage future businesses and challenges. This study explores how commencement speakers utilize success stories pragma-rhetorically to motivate the graduates to behave wisely to take future decisions. It investigates the pragmatic-rhetorical strategies in the motivational storytelling that is delivered within commencement speeches at American universities and institutes. It aims to recognize and analyze these strategies that commencement speakers employ as strategic strategies in presenting their stories to achieve their motivational purposes. More specifically, it explores how speech acts, rhetorical tropes, conversational implicatures, and rhetorical appeals are used and distributed in the storytelling discourse. To this end, the researchers selected ten commencement speeches delivered by American commencement speaker.

STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF MODERN ENGLISH COMMENCEMENT SPEECHES

This paper investigates structural features of modern English commencement speeches. In the article, the commencement speech is defined as a speech delivered at the graduation ceremony by outstanding people, who gained national or international recognition in some field (e.g. science, medicine, business or entertainment). We suggest that commencement address belongs to the entertaining-commemorating type of discourse and its main purpose is to show respect and inspire graduates, to honour the beginning of their independent life. To meet the needs of the study Nagorska’s approach to the speech structure has been adapted. The linguist distinguishes three main parts of a speech: Introductory, Basic and Final Communicative Units. The article focuses on the analysis of Introductory (ICU) and Final Communicative Units (FCU). The results of the study show that ICU starts with the greeting (formal or informal, sometimes both to avoid repetition) that is followed by the address to group or individual addressee. The speakers invariably greet and address the graduates but they may deliberately skip address to other members of the gathering. The keynote speakers tend to air gratitude but usually it appears as a reaction to active audience, their applause or excited exclamations, in that case orators deviate from the original text of their speech and spontaneously thank everybody for their warm welcome. The invariable feature of ICU of all the commencement speeches in question is the expression of honour as every speaker is genuinely grateful for the trust and opportunity to share his/her experience and inspire the younger generation. In FCU the speakers repeat the main message of the speech or challenge the students in order to leave a deep imprint on their memory and induce them to life-changing actions. They inspire graduates not to be afraid of failures and hardships, contribute to the community/country and find their true vocation.

Exploring Afrocentricity: An Analysis of the Discourse of Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is a world recognizable icon, having achieved success in many different arenas. Her ongoing accomplishments have global influence, and she is known for consistently using her powerful voice. As a skilled orator, Winfrey is often sought after for speaking engagements, including commencement ceremonies, and she has delivered numerous graduation speeches to diverse audiences. This article is the third in a series on exploring Afrocentricity in the rhetoric of recognizable black leaders. Specifically, through applying the tenets of Afrocentricity by Molefi Asante, this study examines two of Winfrey’s commencement speeches to examine the Afrocentric nature of her discourse.

An Intercultural Analysis of Personal Metadiscourse in English and Chinese Commencement Speeches

The existing metadiscourse studies on the comparison of English and Chinese language are relatively few, especially on spoken discourse. The present study examines the use of personal metadiscourse in English and Chinese commencement speeches based on Ädel’s reflexive model of metadiscourse and its adaption. The corpus for this study comprises 60 commencement speeches – 30 Chinese and 30 English – delivered in prestigious American and Chinese universities respectively. This study investigates (1) The similarities and differences in the use of personal metadiscourse in English and Chinese commencement speeches; (2) the possible reasons behind these similarities and differences. Qualitative and quantitative analysis indicates that American speeches feature markedly more personal metadiscourse than Chinese speeches. Textual analysis further reveals some similarities and differences in the discourse functions of personal metadiscourse between two sets of texts due to genre characteristics and social-cultural differences. The findings of this study provide some insight into the classification of Chinese metadiscourse and the awareness of cross-cultural communication.

Hawaiʻi Creole in the public domain

In light of a belief that Hawaiʻi Creole (HC) is mostly inappropriate in public domains of society, this study examines how it was employed in two university commencement speeches by a local politician in Hawaiʻi. The analysis adopts the perspective of heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) in order to describe how HC is used together in the speeches with English and also some Hawaiian words. By focusing on the contrastive indexical meanings attached to all three languages, the analysis describes how the speaker combined humor and serious advice in his speeches. In particular, a focus is given to a specific feature of the HC grammar, the negative imperative, that was used by the speaker to underscore his main points. Discussion of the analysis considers the potential of the perspective of heteroglossia to understand the usage of HC in the public domain in Hawaiʻi to construct formal speeches of a decidedly ʻlocal’ style.