The text is a speech delivered by Oprah Winfrey at the Stanford commencement ceremony in 2008. In the speech she talks about three lessons that she has learnt throughout her life. She says that “The three lessons that have had the greatest impact on my life have to do with feelings, with failure and with finding happiness.“ The lesson for feelings consists of her explaining about how she came to be a famous talk show host. She talks about the conflict that often occurred between her personal beliefs and demands from her boss. When she discovered that being on a talk show could allow her to combine the career she wanted and her beliefs.
Throughout the speech, she emphasises how she learnt from her failures, particularly during her time at the school that she started in South Africa. She learnt that some of the girls at the school had been sexually abused by one of the matrons. From this she realised that the way she had planned the school was wrong and that had contributed to the girls being sexually abused. However, the girls that had been abused showed resilience and Oprah used their resilience to learn to prevent it from happening again.
Finally, she talks about finding happiness through helping others and doing good. She expresses the need for people to find what they enjoy doing and to help others in
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Rhetorical questions require the audience to reflect on how they would respond. Two impertinent questions to her message are “How do I define success?” and “What is this here to teach me?”. Repetition of “what is this here to teach me?” is used to instill in the audience the importance of learning throughout their life. The questions are linked as the audience’s personal definition of can be used upon reflection of “What is this here to teach me?”. Therefore, the use of rhetorical questions requires the audience to reflect upon what makes their life successful and what they can