Neil Thupili

Ms Dott

Honors English 3

05/15/18

What would you do after being shot in the forehead, tortured and harassed by some of the

most notorious and wanted people in the world? After being brutally shot by the Pakistan based

terrorist group the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani female rights activist , Nobel Prize

winner and a symbol for women and children all around the world , still managed to find the

courage to fight for what she stood for and delivered a speech on July 12th 2013 that shook the

UN general assembly and would go on to change the world’s views on women’s rights and

education.Yousafzai builds eloquence in many ways including personal facts and her story,

enticing facts and statistics, and appeals to emotions and a high pathos.

Being an avid advocate for women’s rights, Yousafzai finds it her goal to help promote this

goal and having the ability to speak in front of one the world’s most powerful entities,The UN,

allows her to successfully promote this and claims that women are being tortured and humiliated

around the world and better quality of and better enforced rights and education is beneficial to

our society, so we should be working to improve it.This is seen in quotes like “They are afraid of

women. The power of the voice of women frightens them(Yousafzai)” and “It is the duty and

responsibility to get education for each child, that is what it says(Yousafazai)”. The first quote

implies that people against women are scared of their true powers and true colors and if they

weren’t so afraid, women’s positions in this world may be better, promoting Yousafzai's agenda

.The second quote refers to how it’s people's moral duty to provide education connecting to her

purpose. These examples show how Yousfazai’s main purpose is to convince the members of

the UN and more leaders to promote women’s rights and education.

 In order to make her speech so persuasive and effective on such on an audience such as that

of the UN, Yousafazai used various rhetorical techniques. The technique used most effectively

is metaphors, as seen in quotes like “weapon of knowledge(Yousfazai)” and “shield ourselves in

unity and togetherness(Yousafzai)”. By using the word “weapon” to describe the knowledge,

Yousafzai creates an effect on the reader showing how powerful knowledge can be. It also

relates to how her attackers who shot her, used weapons to against her but she claims that

knowledge could be a more powerful weapon than guns and swords. The word “shield” creates

an effect of protection on the reader and how by listening to Yousafzai, audience too can feel

protected and feel united.The second most effective technique is the usage of hyperboles.This

is seen in quotes like “ our words can change the world(Yousafzai)”.This quote exaggerates

how big of a change can be brought out through just using words which leaves the audience

feeling more hopeful.Another technique, is the usage of parallelism as seen in the quote “We

call upon all governments to ensure free, compulsory education all over the world for every

child. We call upon all the governments to fight against terrorism and violence”(Yousafzai).This

parallelism brings forth repetition of the lines “we call upon” which emphasizes what the people

or the public wants which makes it more effective for the audience listening which is the UN

members as the speaker stresses on what’s important and the need for change.The usage of

these techniques, especially the diligently used metaphors, certainly has an effect on the

audience making them side with Yousafzai and understand her purpose.

Along with all of the various techniques Yousfzai uses, she also creates a unique tone for the

speech that has an influence on the audience.The tone of the speech seems to be Passionate

and hopeful.The passionate tone is reflected through the use of exemplary diction and imagery.

One example of diction is the usage of the word “ambitions” which connotes to dreams or

fighting for something further connoting to passion for this fight and an example of imagery is

the quote”Weakness, fear and hopelessness died”(Yousafzai) which shows how all the qualities
that are the opposite of hopeful are now gone and all that remains is hope, creating a hopeful

tone.The mood can be described as motivating.This is once again shown through the use of

imagery as seen in the quote” bright, peaceful future” which shows the audience what they can

have if they side with the speaker and her values. Another example of imagery is the line”let us

pick up our books and pens, they are the most powerful weapons”(YOusafzai) that shows how

by siding with the speaker’s views such as those on education, the world can be better , and

motivates the audience.From this, it can be clearly seen how the mood is motivating and the

tone is hopeful and passionate.

Overall, Yousafzai brings out her purpose of convincing her audience of the UN about

empowering women and children’s educational rights in many ways,and does so in many ways

such as the various rhetorical techniques like metaphors and parallelism and creating a tone of

hopefulness and passion and a mood that is motivating and supports both of these with

expanse use of imagery, language and diction. Since this speech, the UN and world leaders

have put many new laws and regulations in place supporting women,and have placed”Deep legal

and legislative changes are needed to ensure women’s rights around the world”(Farran) and are

improving children’s education.

Citations:

“Women.” United Nations, United Nations, www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/women/.

“Malala Yousafzai Speech in Full.” BBC News, BBC, 12 July 2013,

www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-23291897/malala-yousafzai-speech-in-full.
“Malala Yousafzai's Speech at the Youth Takeover of the United Nations.” Theirworld,

Theirworld, 7 Dec. 2016, theirworld.org/explainers/malala-yousafzais-speech-at-the-

youth-takeover-of-the-united-nations.