Dedication could never exist without motivation. In this speech delivered by Queen Elizabeth in 1588, she addresses her soldiers in Tilbury before the expected invasion of England by Spanish troops. Through her speech, she makes an attempt to create enthusiasm, boost morale, and motivate the troops through the use of rhetorical strategies such as Ethos, diction, and procatalepsis. The first rhetorical strategy employed by the queen is the use of selective diction in her address to the soldiers. Despite the blurred lines between the differentiation of her use of ethos and diction, Elizabeth takes a route of anthropomorphising her position amongst the troops whilst establishing her superiority as nobility. She refers to her position along the troops through her claiming ‘amongst you all’ every time that she calls upon her soldiers, and claims that she is prepared to ‘live or die’ for her country. For the subjectively inferior eyes of a soldier, they see that even the great noble woman that she is, she is dedicated to defending England at all costs. In that respect,the queen is willing to fight shoulder to shoulder with the men who will soon be fighting. Elizabeth employs the inclusive pronoun of ‘we’ in order to highlight the combined effort that both the soldiers and herself must undergo in order to defeat the opposing side. She alludes to the strength and tribulations that her people …show more content…
must undergo and sympathises with the soldiers’ fear by proposing the possible outcome of a “famous victory.” She promises that she will undergo all the tests of valor that the soldiers must in order to