User:Sarah Tillett/sandbox

'''"We should all be feminists", is a speech that was delivered by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieat a TEDxEuston conference in April 2013. ''' The speech can be viewed on youtube here. The speech looks at the importance of gender, and feminism.

Sections of the speech were used in Beyoncé's self titled album on the track Flawless. The samples used from the speech within the song can be found here.

Chimamanda focuses on her own experiences, retelling stories of how throughout her life, her actions and opinions are considered feminist and how this was not a good thing according to those around her. Chimamanda has been nominated and won many awards.

Adichie’s deliverance of the speech is confident, she interacts with the audience, and even laughs once or twice. She creates a connection which enables her to deliver her ideas without forcing them upon the audience. The speech itself is powerful, the use of syntactic parallelism compliments the argument is trying to make. Her sentences in the following section of her speech are all short, simple and direct. Which means she able to convey her point clearly, but within these short sentences she has been able to use many literary rhetorical devices which can often be found in speeches to persuade an opinion on to an audience.

"We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently. We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability."

Adichie’s use of repetition is a key literary device often used to remind the audience of the theme, which as the title “We Should All Be Feminists” indicates, is change. Anaphora is used twice within this section of her speech, first at the beginning with “We must” and ending with “We teach”. Her use of anaphora reinforces the unity indicated by the use of the first person plural, which themselves imply a sense of collectiveness. Because of this Adichie is able to freely criticise the current state of affairs because the use of the subjective plural “we” makes it sound like the she, as the speaker is also unwittingly responsible / affected by it. These examples of rhetorical devices also combined with Adichie’s use of the metaphor “cage” is emotive, the idea that “we put boys inside the cage” suggests “we” are to blame. Adichie’s use of pathos means she is able to foster a relationship between herself, the orator and the audience. And because of this, again she is able to make criticisms. This is something that is clear throughout Chimamanda’s speech. “We Should All Be Feminists” is a criticism on society’s perception of Feminism, and it is this perception which also needs to change. At the end of her speech she explains what is to be a Feminist, in her personal opinion:

"I am feminist. When I looked up the word in the dictionary that day this is what it said: Feminist a person who believes in the social political and economic equality of the sexes."

My own definition of feminism is a feminist is a man or woman who says: "Yes there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better."

Chimamanda’s definition of Feminism again focuses on the use of the first person plural, she continually throughout her speech is trying to include everyone: both men and women because she believes that by working together, we can make a difference.

"“Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colours the way we experience the world. But we can change that.”"

Chimamanda's Wikipedia page can be referenced for more information about her personal life and career. The whole speech "We Should All Be Feminists" can also be found on the TEDx website. It is also worth looking at Chimamanda's personal website for more information, and the chance to purchase some of her books, amongst other things.