Barack Obama's 2012 Victory Speech

This study guide will help you analyze Barack Obama's election victory speech from 2012. We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on summary, analysis, topic, speaker, audience, language, modes of persuasion, circumstances and intention.

Presentation of the speech

Title: “Barack Obama's 2012 Victory Speech”
Speaker: Barack Obama
Where: McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois
When: 7^th of November, 2012, right after Obama won the 2012 election in the US.

Barack Obama (b. 1961) is an African-American politician who served as the 44^th President of the United States between 2009 and 2017. The 2012 election victory speech was delivered after he won the presidential elections for his second term.

You can watch the speech here.

Excerpt

Below, you can read an excerpt from our study guide:

Pathos

Obama appeal to the audience’s emotions very frequently in the speech focusing on feelings of hope, pride, and solidarity. Most of the time, he manages to awaken the audience’s feelings through different narratives such as the following one: “You'll hear the pride in the voice of a volunteer who's going door to door because her brother was finally hired when the local auto plant added another shift.”

Another touching story is the one about the father of a girl suffering from leukaemia: “And when he spoke to the crowd, listening to that father's story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes because we knew that little girl could be our own.” This story is meant to convince the audience that Obama’s healthcare reform was necessary and successful.