Rhetorical Analysis Of Chris Christie's Address

Nationally, for the first time in 2015, deaths from heroin overdoses alone surpassed deaths in the United States of America by firearm homicides (New Jersey). In 2015 New Jersey lost nearly “1,600” people to drug overdoses. On January 10, 2017, Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey gave a heartfelt speech to a group of intellectuals and the to people of New Jersey about the mistreatment of the disease known as addiction and what we can and will do to treat it. Christie uses a clear antithesis to show his message that addiction is a cruel and brutal disease that will stop at nothing to infect everybody (Arco). To make sure his words are burnt into the viewers mind he uses: frequent tone change and practices comforting, but controlling

Chris Christie uses frequent tone change to portray his emotions to help the audience relate and therefore making the new information they are presented easier to chew. Christie begins the address with a very appreciative tone as he repeats, “Thank you, thank you very much,” over and over again. He goes on to discuss statistics and taxes in New Jersey with objective and formal tone and gives you the sense that there is something later on in the speech that he is more passionate about (spoiler alert: there is). Towards the middle of Christie’s address things start to intensify when we see Christie bringing up personal examples from a close friend in the audience named Pam. Pam had a son (whose name is not mentioned for privacy reasons) that battled addiction since he was sixteen years old

One of the most important to his strategy is when he connects addiction to the education system (New Jersey). Christie believes that if there is a spread of this disease schools will be negatively affected and kids will not be able to learn because they’re coming to school high. This, according to Christie and his research would damage all children and eventually make the disease even more widespread. Connecting the education system and children to addiction is crucial to his address because it makes people think about their own kids and how they would feel in the situation that their offspring overdosed on a drug. Christie uses this tactic to influence the viewers into wanting to take action against the disease. If the viewers want to take action, then there is a fairly good chance that when Christie takes action they will standing behind him and willing to support him. After all, all they have to lose is their own flesh and