Language
The language Emmeline Pankhurst uses in her speech, “Freedom or Death”, is engaging and complex. The speaker combines serious and emotionally powerful images with irony and sarcasm, maintaining the audience’s attention: “and it was proved to the authorities that weak women, suffrage women, as we are supposed to be, had enough ingenuity to create a situation of that kind.” (p. 93, ll. 36-38)
Despite its complexity, the speech is easy to follow because the speaker creates relatable and descriptive images: “But let the men of Hartford imagine that they were not in the position of being voters at all, that they were governed without their consent being obtained...” (p. 92, ll…
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Choice of words
The choice of words is connected with the topic of the speech, which is women’s fight for voting rights: “win the rights of citizenship” (p. 91, l. 25). However, because the speaker creates extensive analogies between the Women’s Suffrage Movement and revolutions and wars, there are numerous words related to these topics: “soldier” (p. 91, l. 8), “revolutionaries” (p. 91, l. 17), “civil war is waged by women” (p. 91, ll. 9-10), “noncombatants” (p. 93, l. 11), etc. Such words are used because the speaker’s main intention is to argue in favour of militant tactics as a means of achieving…
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Sentence structure
Emmeline Pankhurst uses sentences of various lengths in her speech, a technique used to maintain the audience’s attention. Sometimes she delivers a very clear and concise message through short or medium-length sentences: “That’s the whole history of politics.” (p. 93, l. 5); “No power on earth can govern a human being, however f…
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Tone
Emmeline Pankhurst uses a mixture of different tones in the speech. Many parts of the speech suggest a serious and determined tone: “We were determined to press this question of the enfranchisement of women to the point where we were no longer to be ignored by the politicians.” (p. 92, l…
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Anecdotes
Anecdotes are stories that are used to send a message in relation to the topic of the speech.
One such example from the speech is the story about the suffragettes in Britain blocking telegraphic communications in the UK and disrupting the economy: “We entirely prevented stock brokers in London from telegraphing to stock brokers in Glasgow and vice versa: for one whole day tel…
