Saturday, July 11, 2015

Analyze the following text in terms of audience, purpose, and context: "Mr. President, Members of the International Olympic Committee. I'm Denise...

To analyze the audience, purpose, and context of this speech, we actually need a bit more background information. We can find this speech both published and analyzed in Jon Steel's book Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business.


Through some basic research, we can discover both the context and purpose of this speech. Olympic champion Denise Lewis gave this speech as part of a lobbying effort to win the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. In terms of more specific context, the speech was given at the Raffle City Convention Centre in Singapore on July 6, 2005. Lewis was chosen to seek in order to establish "ethos" (or credibility) for London's bid, as she had participated (as she states) in the Games in Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens and knows what athletes want. Lewis uses her time in the spotlight to discuss London's plan for giving future Olympic athletes the best possible experience by centralizing the location of the Olympic Village. This establishes London as a great geographic candidate for hosting. 


We can note that Lewis identifies her audience right at the beginning of the speech by directly addressing the President and Members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who was responsible for voting on who would host the 2012 Olympics. 


Finally, the good news is that this was obviously an effective speech! The IOC did indeed choose London to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. 

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