I‘d like to share my opinions about the State
of Union Address 2016 made by Barack Obama on January 12, 2016. (https://haiti.usembassy.gov/press-rel-2016-sotu.html)
At the beginning, Obama says “…from
helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical
treatments for patients. And I'll keep pushing for progress on the work that
still needs doing. Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from
gun violence…” (haiti.usembassy.gov) According to Orwell, “The great enemy of
clear language is insincerity.”(137) Thanks to Orwell, I learn several points
about insincerity. First, as we have known, gun control is a big deal nowadays.
More and more people and families are suffering from the harm from guns.
However, through the whole speech, the only place talking about gun is in this
paragraph with just one sentence, and the content above that sentence is like “helping
students learn to write computer code”, which are not in the same weight. For
me, the only reason he says like that is to hide what he don’t want to say, and
this is an example of insincerity. Another example is the sentence nearby, “Fixing
a broken immigration system.” Also, immigration is an important issue for
America. Donald Trump talks a lot reasonable actions about immigration he
suggests doing in 2016 RNC. However, Obama just talks one sentence that is kind
of abstract and. lacking explanations. This comparison shows the insincerity of
Obama’s speech again.
Orwell shows us that one of the qualities
that cause the failure of language is “lack of precision”. I find one example
in Obama’s speech. “For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing
economy that works better for everybody. We've made progress. But we need to
make more.” This is an independent point in the middle of the speech. What can
we learn from that? What benefits everybody gets? What is the progress they’ve
made? What should be make more? No explain, no data, and no examples, which is
pretty an irresponsible expression. Hence, I think this sentence is not only “lack
of precision” but also “meaningless words”.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYu,
ReplyDeleteI agree to most of your points, and I think the examples you gave can suitably imply a common way that a politician gives his speech. That is, politician gets used to avoid some important things that the audience are expecting them to talk about, but they rather like to talk the minor things which may be easier for them to realize. I think this is a kind of hypocrisy and the speech itself can consist of unclear language. Plus, I think their speech can be also filled with lies, which may be not that easy to recognize. Since they may use an encouraging tones to give the speech, which makes people think they are so confident with their ideas that the ideas cannot be false; however, the contents of the speech are actually useless and meaningless.