Speech Analysis By Anvitha Mandapati Macauley Project Mascarenhas

Speech Analysis By: Anvitha Mandapati, Macauley Project Mascarenhas, Arnav Kadam, Carson Jones, and Ashlyn Lacy Speech: #5 Address to the Nation After the Challenger Disaster by Ronald Reagan

The Close Reading: Five Words: Tragedy Impact Faith Nation Freedom

The Close Reading: Tragedy is an important word in this text, because seven people had died in a space shuttle accident. I think tragedy is the mood of this speech, because it shows how not just the nation but everyone is mourning for the loss of these seven astronauts. This is shown in the text, “But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. ”

The Close Reading: Impact is an important word, because it shows how even though we mourn for these seven people we have learned and gained knowledge from this experience. Ronald Reagan is saying that we don’t know the effects yet, but we are working towards a better path. In his speech he says, “The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them. ” We have not reached our destination yet as a country, but we are working towards it as one.

The Close Reading: Faith is an important word in this text, because it shows that we should not give up as a country. We have lost people who were trying to lead us to our future, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give up. I personally believe that there will be hard times, but you have to work through the hard times to reach your destination. To help keep faith and hope in the people Ronald gives an example of a coincidence. He says, “Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete. ” He wants to compare the situations to help keep faith in the country.

The Close Reading: Nation is an important word, because it describes our country and the impact and mourn it is going through right now for the loss of these seven people. Ronald in his speech says, “We mourn their loss as a nation together. ” The word nation also helps bring our nation together and unite into one. Our country is very diverse and we all have different cultures, religions, and even ideas, but we call belong to one nation. No matter how different each person is, we are all labeled under being in one nation.

The Close Reading: Freedom is an important word, because that is what our country is built upon. All the citizens of the United States have basic rights that are not guaranteed in other parts of the world. Freedom helps give the right for the public to know the true story of the seven civilians and nothing should be covered up. Ronald in his speech says, “We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. ” Freedom helps represent our country and is the foundation of our prospering country today.

Part 2: Contextual Analysis ● The morning of January 28 was unusually cold, and engineers warned their superiors that certain components—particularly the rubber O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters—were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures. However, these warnings went unheeded, and at 11: 39 a. m. Challenger lifted off. ● Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including the families of Mc. Auliffe and the other astronauts on board, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. ● The mission’s launch from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was delayed for six days due to weather and technical problems. ● Shortly after the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. ● Their investigation revealed that the O-ring seal on the Challenger’s solid rocket booster, which had become brittle in the cold temperatures, failed. ● The commission also found that Morton Thiokol, the company that designed the solid rocket boosters, had ignored warnings about potential issues. ● After the accident, NASA refrained from sending astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesgned a number of the shuttle’s features. ● Ten years after the Challenger tragedy, two large pieces from the spacecraft washed ashore on a Florida beach. The remaining debris is now stored in a missile silo at Cape Canaveral. Conclusion: These facts explain what exactly happened to the space shuttle and why the problem was there in the first place. It also explains who could have stopped this from happening and shows how being careless can cause accidents

Part 3: Overall Purpose and Claim The overall purpose of this speech was to inform the people about the horrendous space shuttle accident. His other purpose was to console the families that were affected by this tragic accident. Regan was also trying to help the younger school children understand that such incidents happen in life. "It's part of the process of exploration and discover" ~ Ronald Regan

Part 4: Rhetorical Devices ● Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning or meter. o Reagan uses parallelism when he lists the names of the astronauts who died, and when he tells the audience “There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and… in space. ” o

Part 4: Rhetorical Devices (cont. ) ● Metaphor: Metaphor is a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics. o Reagan uses metaphor when he says “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave. ” He also uses it when he says “We know we share this pain… of our country. ” o

Part 5 (a): Group Impressions Carson: “interesting and well put together. ” Macauley: “was a good speech that comforted those who were affected by this tragedy” Anvitha: “. . . was an overall good speech and helped motivate the people move on and look forward to the future. ” Arnav: "this speech was informative to many people, including myself, about the national loss of the space shuttle. " Ashlyn: “this speech tries to motivate the people still mourning the explosion of the space shuttle and make them look forward to future expeditions. ”

Part 5 (b): Effective Strategies Parallelism was used because Ronald Reagan wanted to honor the people who died in the explosion. Saying the name of every person who fell victim to the tragesty forced people to think of the people and their lives before it happened. Metaphors were used because he wanted people to feel a sense of pride and hopefulness towards the future of America and what we are going to accomplish. Also, he brings the country together emotionally by saying that we all come together with this great loss and how even if we didn’t know the people personally, we still understand that it happened and how it is a loss to everyone.

Citations “Challenger Disaster. ” History. com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 15 Oct. 2014; I used this to find my facts about what happened to the Challenger 7.

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