Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Jamila Lyiscott

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The United States is made up of some of the most diverse and interesting cultures in the world. Jamila Lyiscott proves this by showing her different dialects and how they are all equally important. Lyiscott believes that the way she speaks towards her parents, towards her friends, and towards her colleagues are all one in the same.  Throughout the entirety of her speech, Lyiscott changes up her vocal patterns and dialects so that the audience can understand first hand what each of these dialects are. When she talks about her father, Lyiscott uses her native tongue, when she talks to her fellow neighbors and close friends she switches it up to a more urbanized dialect, and when she is in school she masks the other two dialects with a professional sounding language. Lyiscott wants the audience to not only know about her different dialects, but to be amazed as to how different they all sound. Lyiscott does this to then indicate that although they may sound different, each of her three tongues are all equal in importance. This builds up her credibility as a speaker because not only do we know she cares about the importance of the many dialects of …show more content…

However, she admits that she is at fault of mistakingly using one tongue over another, and she insists that she speaks this "broken English" because of her broken history. She directly relates the use of her tongues back to her ancestors and, ultimately, to racism. She could just forget about her native dialect, but she chooses not to so that people will know that her ancestors' lives will never be forgotten or go amiss. She is fed up of people negatively connoting her, saying that her "hair is bad" or that her "English is broken." Lyiscott wants her audience to know that her ancestors shall not die in vain, and she shall do this through the use of her native

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