Audience

Target audience

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered the commencement address in front of the live audience present at the graduation ceremony of 2015 at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

It is safe to assume that the audience is comprised both of graduates and their relatives, as well as the professors. Since Wellesley College is a private women’s liberal arts college in the USA, the main audience were women who graduated from there. Since private schools are fairly expensive in the US, most of the audience probably came from middle-class and wealthier family backgrounds. In the speech, Adichie connects to her young female audience by references to make-up (ll. 20-24) or pop singer Beyoncé (ll. 258-261).  

Adichie also explains that she herself studied in the US, creating a point of connection between speaker and audien...