Structure and tone

Here, you can read our discussion regarding the structure and tone of “Online Harassment and Cyber Mobs” by Anita Sarkeesian.…

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Structure

Anita Sarkeesian’s speech is structured in the form of a personal story meant to enhance Sarkeesian’s message regarding online harassment and cyber mobs. Note that Sarkeesian’s speech is built around one of her experiences, which makes it easier for the audience to empathize with her and her opinions.

What is more, you should also note that Sarkeesian’s speech is constructed in a traditional way, containing an opening part, a main body and a closing part.

Opening

In the opening, Sarkeesian grabs the public’s attention by beginning with an expression that makes the audience curious: “I’d like to share with you a story about how I accidentally became the villain of a massively online game…

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Tone

When it comes to the tone of the speech, note that, overall, it is fairly formal, as Sarkeesian is addressing the audience of a TEDxWomen conference. Although Sarkeesian was harassed online, she manages to avoid an aggressive tone when she speaks about her perpetrators; instead, she turns to sarcasm in her replies to suggest the lack of maturity on behalf of the cyber-mob that attacked her:

The idea being that if you were interested in the project, you could donate, and if you weren’t interested, you could choose not to donate. It’s pretty straightforward, right? I mean what could possibly go wrong? Yeah. Turns out that there are a bunch of male gamers out there who were, shall we say, not too excite…