This speech was given in UN 4th conference on “Women Plenary Session” in Beijing on 5th September, 1995. The speaker of the speech was well renowned as first lady of United States and is wife of 42nd US president Mr. Bill Clinton. Her name Hillay Rodham Clinton is an iconic figure for all the women around the world. She actively participated in the 4th conference on “Women Plenary Session” and met many delegates during her stay to convince people to formulate and regulate the sanctity of women rights in their respective countries. She persuaded her audience very convincingly in her speech through using logical structure of reasoning (John, Frank, 2010).
This speech has a clear objective and that is to address the issue of violation of women rights. The orator has stated the issue in a composed manner and addressed it with logical reasoning. The speaker is addressing the audience which consists of mostly the high level delegates from countries around the globe and convincing them to implement the women rights through formulating policies and regulations in their respective countries.
The speaker is herself an American official and hence uses herself as well as her country for setting the Ethos of the speech. I have found following quotes as the ethos used by her:-
“Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum. In that forum, we talked about ways that government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working to address the health problems of women and girls. Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local -- and highly successful -- programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.”(Ford 594)
“In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle, before that happened, on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America’s most divisive philosophical wars. But it was a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.”(Ford 595)
She has described in a very composed manner that she is very busy during her stay for the conference which imprints in the minds of the audience that she is an iconic figure to be trusted to listen on the topic. Furthermore she describes that her country has implemented such laws and rules successfully that support women rights and in return she is expecting through the use of this ethos that the other countries’ representatives who are present at the conference will get inspired from this and will focus on her speech.
I have heard much pathos in this speech and big round of applauses after every statement of her in following quote talks for itself of being pathos of her speech.
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.
It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed -- and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.
It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.”(Ford 596)
The speaker has mentioned four more pathos in continuation to above mentioned in which the speaker has briefly defined the violation of women rights through emotionally stressing on the injustice done to women around the world. The speaker has very convincingly addressed the issue through evoking the feminine nature of the audience from the fact that this speech was given in a UN’s women conference.
The speaker has used logos to persuade the audience by defining the freedom for women in following quote from the speech:-
“Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions”(Ford 596)
I can easily deduce from abovementioned quotes that the speaker has clearly linked her logos with the pathos and built a strong reasoning logic to persuade the audience that the freedom of women is not exercised around the world which is their birth right.
I have gone through the speech many times to find the Mythos and I am unable to find any specific of them. However, there is a vague Mythos that can be quoted as mentioned below:-
“Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse.”(Ford 597)
I have thoroughly heard the speech and in it I can hear the big round of applause from the audience after almost every paragraph of the speech. This speech addresses the violation of women rights in a logical manner and condemns the abuse and injustice done to women. I have found this speech to be effective by carefully examining the structure of the speech as it starts from the Ethos then slowly move to Pathos and during the speech everything is linked in a logical manner to cover the Logos part. There is a slight lack of effectiveness at the Mythos part of the speech in which she has vaguely stated the facts and has not mentioned any Mythos in details. If she would have mentioned any Mythos then this speech would have been a perfect one.
Works cited
John Witte, Jr, Frank S. Alexander. Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction. England. Cambridge University Press 2010 .Print.
Lynne E. Ford. Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics. New York; NY Infobase Publishing.2009.Print.
