‘A text of timeless appeal is marked by effective construction of rhetoric to support its main ideas.’
Discuss this statement, making detailed reference to at least two speeches.
Great speeches are those which timelessly captivate audiences through their integrity and rhetoric treatment. This is relevant to Margaret Atwood’s speech in 1994, Spotty Handed Villainesses (hereafter referred to as Villainesses), and Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech in 1995, Keynote Address at the Beijing World Conference on Women (hereafter referred to as Keynote). The ability of a speech to resonate with audiences is dependent on their effective constructive of rhetoric to support the orator’s main ideas.
In Atwood’s ‘Villainesses’, aims to captivate audiences …show more content…

Her argument rests on the notion of women’s traditional role of ‘nurturing, protecting and caring.’ She contrasts this with the statement ‘no war has ever been started by a woman.’ She questions why women have the role of raising the family whilst being denied the same rights and freedoms of men. Suu Kyi furthers the notion of the full participation of women in all levels of government, appealing to logos, repeating the four essential components of human development as identified by the UNDP. She also appeals to logo in stating the UN’s definition of tolerance and goes a step further to redefine it to ‘the active effort to try to understand the point of view of others’, in contrast to ‘live and let live’. Suu Kyi capitalises on her personal context to empower her female audience to call for gender equality. She states that her main thesis is to ‘voice some of the common hopes which firmly unite us all in our splendid diversity,’ conveying the sense that her speech will be free of dogma, but also reflecting the nature of the United Nations. Her reference to ‘brave men’, is also ironic, as she is redefining men not as part of the supremacy that is the case in Burma, but in the minority of those attending the conference. This speeches effective construction of rhetoric devices support’s Suu Kyi’s main ideas of gender inequality in politics.
In conclusion, both speeches convey the