Speech Elements Analysis

Overall Impression of the Speech

During a training camp in the middle of the night, Coach Boone took his isolated football team for a long run-alike walk through the woods. Before delivering a reflective speech about the team, he stopped them at the battle place of Gettysburg. It was an influential speech in order to motivate a crowd of hard-nosed players to change. These players were going through a brainwashing process at home and in their city, where they were trained to dislike the different races. My overall impression of the speech can be summed up as the Coach argues with the historical allusion that the players must get rid of hatred no matter how powerful it may seem. The speech shed an optimistic light on the success which can only be sought if players overcome their racial differences.

Persuasive Elements

Boone utilizes his influence as a Southern black head coach with the leading objective to unify his racially separated team with a speech invigorated by many rhetorical devices together with civil war allusion and vivid imagery, which shift his disappointment to hope. However, the most striking thing in those three minutes was his emotional tone and usage of the appeal of ethos. Another persuasive element was his distinctive argument which describes that we are all mortal and we should listen and take a lesson from the dead people at the battle place.

Real World Relevancy

Identified persuasive elements of the speech can be used in real-world situations. For instance, unity can bring cooperative and interactive powers to a sports team or any other men grouped projects. As all players were divided in terms of white vs black and new versus old, the speech’s persuasive elements suggest that change is the key to success in real life, and we should keep aside racism in our daily life practices and must take a lesson from the dead.

References

Collett, J. L., Kelly, S., & Sobolewski, C. (2010). Using Remember the Titans to teach theories of conflict reduction. Teaching Sociology, 38(3), 258-266.

Cranmer, G. A., & Harris, T. M. (2015). “White-side, strong-side”: A critical examination of race and leadership in Remember the Titans. Howard Journal of Communications, 26(2), 153-171.

In the speech, Coach Boone does not care if they will lose or win that night. He would be very pleased if he saw his players playing a great game. He says that the game they play is a fight. He says that nothing can tear them apart, which shows that they are a team. Coach Boone finally compares his team to the Titans in Greek Mythology. He explains to his team that the Titans are stronger than the gods. They ruled the universe, and they should rule the field and be stronger than ever. He uses pathos to inspire his team and play a game that they will never forget.

Coach Boone tries to make his football team feel something that they are playing a football game on a famous battlefield. This battlefield is Gettysburg. It’s where fifty thousand men died. Coach Boone knew that they were fighting for good reasons and was trying to express this to his team. He uses pathos to make his team feel something and uses emotions. He also uses repetition and pauses for dramatic effect. He uses anastrophe to make his speech sound more mature. It tells the team that on his Battlefield, his brother was killed and that his family was destroyed after dreadful events. He begins to say that he doesn’t care if they like each other or not> he just wants them to respect each other and play like a family.

Coach Boone talks about how the team’s anger towards each other acts on the field. I feel that the author did well really when telling this speech i didn’t find anything wrong with the speech. Boone uses two Rhetorical Devices to make them feel something. The first question was “You get angry?’, and the second question was “Son, you got aggression”. The most persuasive argument of the speech to me was when Coach Boone said, “I will never, ever cut a player who comes out to play for me, but when you put that uniform on, that titan uniform, you better come to work.” He uses pathos when he says, “You look like a bunch of fifth-grade sissies after a catfight.