Audience, Audience, Audience

First, I suppose I'll address Obama's appearance during his "Back to School" speech. I looked up what the colors of ties have to do with mood, and while I couldn't find what stripes meant (granted I didn't look that hard), I did find what gray (or silver) and white meant separately, because it looks like those are the colors of his tie.

"White ties:

White ties are said to be the Queen of all neckties. White is the traditional color of ties when ties made it into the fashion world in France during the 17th century. White is a color of purity and neutrality. Judges in Germany for example are required to wear white ties to court. When matched with a solid black dress shirt and black suit, the white tie has more of a “gangster” image on the other hand.

Gray neckties:

Gray is men’s favorite suit color. Gray is said to be solid, conservative, and timeless. For neckties, gray is most common in the winter. Silver ties popular ties for formal events during warm weather or during the day."       (source)

So I suppose the gray/silver mixed with the white might mean that he was going for a neutral look (as he wasn't focusing on sided politics, but rather the success of children) and possibly also because he wanted to appear solid, as a role model or something like that.

Alright, now on to the actual presentation and content of the speech. The thing I noticed most about the whole speech was that the language he used was so fitting to younger people. The very first word he said was "hey". Not "hello", not "welcome" or anything like that. Simply "hey". "Omigosh, I say "hey" to my friends too! That's so cool! The president is JUST LIKE me!" might be (and over-exaggerated version of) the reaction that he was hoping to get. He also used phrases like "Now , if you promise not to tell anybody, I'll let you in on a little secret," which shows how he is trying to be more personal and less formal as well. These both show how he really focuses on who is audience is.

He also expresses his purpose well. It is very obvious that his main goal is to motivate students to do their best and work hard both in and out of school. He uses the word "future" a lot (maybe as a scare tactic if you're someone like me) probably to emphasize how much our actions now impact what will happen to not only us, but our nation, later in our lives.

In terms of signposts, I noticed one of the first when he said "...so I want to talk to you about meeting that responsibility. It starts with... " which clearly denotes that he is about to expand upon previous ideas. I didn't notice too terribly much repetition (certainly not as much as MLK at least) but I noticed a little bit of figurative language, such as "sometimes you have to color outside of the lines" (which, but the way, I laughed out loud when he said that). He wasn't necessarily too dramatic in his speech, but I suppose that's because the issue wasn't quite as dramatic as an issue that's killing people right and left (though school certainly seems like it's attempting to kill my social life).

I guess what's left now is delivery. With his delivery of the speech, he was very good about not being monotone and changing his facial expression a lot. Especially at the beginning, he was very smiley as he was greeting everyone, and then as his topic got more serious, so did his face. I did notice, however, that he said a lot of "uhs".

And I think that's about it, EXCEPT,  I have to acknowledge the fact that he talked specifically about musicals and marching band coming together :)