Rhetorical Analysis of a Speech: Context, Structure and Devices — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 12 text analysis & essays worksheet.
Rhetorical Analysis of a Speech: Context, Structure and Devices — Answers
Part A: The rhetorical situation and key devices
Answer each question.
- speaker
- audience
- purpose
- occasion
- To pay tribute to the volunteers and inspire listeners to volunteer themselves.
- A nurse retiring after thirty-eight years, with deep personal authority.
- The official opening of a new hospital wing named after its volunteers.
- Hospital staff, officials, volunteers, families and community members at an opening ceremony.
Answer: speaker → A nurse retiring after thirty-eight years, with deep personal authority.; audience → Hospital staff, officials, volunteers, families and community members at an opening ceremony.; purpose → To pay tribute to the volunteers and inspire listeners to volunteer themselves.; occasion → The official opening of a new hospital wing named after its volunteers.
- Aantithesis
- Banaphora
- Chyperbole
- Donomatopoeia
Answer: anaphora
Anaphora is repetition at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences.
- ATo mock the hospital
- BTo relax the audience and build warmth and rapport before the serious message
- CTo fill the five minutes
- DTo show the speaker does not take the occasion seriously
Answer: To relax the audience and build warmth and rapport before the serious message
Self-deprecating, gentle jokes make the speaker likeable and the audience receptive.
- Aa concession and rebuttal
- Ba call to action
- Can anecdote
- Da rhetorical question
Answer: a concession and rebuttal
The speaker acknowledges an alternative view (I understand that) and then answers it.
- Aintroduce statistics
- Bend on a short, universal and memorable contrast that links back to the title
- Cintroduce a new argument
- Dlist the names of volunteers
Answer: end on a short, universal and memorable contrast that links back to the title
We will not remember... We will remember who stayed is balanced, personal and echoes The Ones Who Stayed.
Part B: Tracing the speaker's moves
Answer in full sentences, using short quotations.
Answer: 1–2: a warm, humorous opening that builds rapport and establishes the speaker's long experience. 3–4: the tribute, describing what volunteers do and asserting their value. 5: concession and rebuttal, answering the view that wings should be named after donors or surgeons. 6: specific named examples and a gentle call to action aimed at younger listeners. 7: a universal, emotional conclusion that echoes the title.
Answer: She mentions being a nurse for thirty-eight years and remembers the old hospital, so the audience trusts her first-hand knowledge. Her modest, humorous tone also makes her seem honest and likeable.
Answer: Three short, parallel sentences fairly acknowledge what donors, surgeons and politicians contribute, building a rhythm that the next sentence breaks: "But it is kindness that makes people want to walk through them." The pattern makes the final point about kindness land with greater force.
Answer: Specific names and concrete actions make an abstract tribute personal and vivid. The audience can picture real people, which moves them emotionally (pathos) and pays tribute to the volunteers directly.
Answer: A light joke wins over a potentially disengaged part of the audience, and singling them out turns the tribute into an invitation, serving the speech's second purpose of inspiring new volunteers.
Answer: By saying "every one of us will be in one of these beds", the speaker turns a tribute to others into something personal for every listener, reminding them that they too will one day depend on kindness.
Part C: Your turn
Model answer: Speaking at the opening of a wing named after them, the retiring nurse uses carefully structured rhetoric to transform a formal ceremony into a heartfelt tribute and a quiet call to action. She opens with gentle, self-deprecating jokes about knowing "exactly how long five minutes can feel" and soup in varieties of "hot, warm and regrettable", which relaxes an audience of officials and families while subtly establishing her thirty-eight years of experience. Having won their goodwill, she shifts to tribute, using anaphora in "The ones who sat... The ones who pushed... The ones who knitted" to build an accumulating picture of quiet, ordinary devotion. Her concession that a wing might instead be named after "a donor, or a surgeon, or a politician" anticipates the doubts of some listeners, and the tricolon "Money builds walls. Skill saves lives. Decisions open doors" respectfully acknowledges them before the turn to kindness reframes what truly matters. By naming Rose and Arjun, she makes the volunteers vivid and real, appealing to the audience's emotions. Her playful address to "the younger ones at the back" then turns admiration into invitation, serving her purpose of recruiting new volunteers. Finally, the universal claim that "every one of us will be in one of these beds" widens the speech's significance to each listener, and the closing antithesis "We will remember who stayed" echoes the title, leaving a memorable, moving final image. Through this progression from lightness to tribute to invitation, the speaker ensures her audience leaves not only grateful for the volunteers but considering joining them.
Success criteria:
- Opens by establishing the rhetorical situation (speaker, audience, occasion, purpose)
- Traces the structure or shifts in the speech, not just isolated devices
- Analyses at least three devices with short, embedded quotations
- Explains effects on this specific audience and links to purpose
- Uses precise metalanguage (anaphora, tricolon, concession, antithesis, ethos, pathos)
- Sustained formal register with a linking final sentence
Marking tips
- Give credit for correct method even when the final answer slips — the working shows where the thinking went right.
- For open-ended tasks, use the success criteria as a checklist rather than looking for one "right" answer.
- Celebrate what went well first, then pick one thing to work on next.
Great work. Here's what to try next: