How to Analyse a Speech

Why this page exists

Speeches are written to be heard, not just read — and that changes how you should analyse them. A speaker chooses every story, every pause and every repeated phrase for a reason: to build trust, to move an audience emotionally, or to make an argument feel undeniable. This page trains you to notice those choices and, more importantly, to explain why they work.

Learning goals

By the end of this lesson, you can:

Fictional Practice Speech

Fictional practice speech created for educational purposes. Any resemblance to real people, organisations or events is coincidental.

Before you analyse any speech, establish the communicative situation. This tells you who is speaking, to whom, and why — and it shapes everything else you will say in your analysis.

Understanding the task

The exact wording of your analysis task decides how you should structure your answer. Read it carefully before you start writing.

For each task below, decide which structure fits best. Watch for the keywords that give it away.

Structure of a speech analysis

Introduction

Open with the TATT method — name the speaker, the title or occasion, the text type and the topic, plus the audience and communicative purpose where relevant:

Then state your central claim: the central communicative strategy of the speech, and what your analysis will show. It answers the question — what is the speaker's overall aim, and how do they pursue it?

Main part

A strong main part is clearly structured, written in full analytical paragraphs, and always combines content with language and structure. Every claim needs a textual quotation as evidence — and every device you mention needs its function explained. Only refer to devices you can actually support with evidence.

A complete analytical paragraph answers all of these questions:

• What does the speaker do?
• Which evidence supports the observation?
• Which technique is used?
• How does it influence the audience?
• Why is the strategy used at this point?
• How does it support the overall purpose?

Conclusion

Your conclusion should summarise your main findings, return to your central claim, evaluate the speech's overall strategy, and judge its likely effect on the intended audience. Do not introduce new textual evidence here.

Analysing the line of argument

A speech's line of argument usually moves through recognisable stages. Not every speech uses all of them, and not always in this order, but knowing the list helps you describe what a speaker is doing at each point:

Task: map the practice speech

Match each paragraph of the practice speech to the argumentative function it performs. Use the line numbers to check the text if you need to.

Audience, purpose and appeals

A speaker always writes with a specific target audience in mind — their expectations, values and relationship to the speaker shape every choice of language. Speakers build trust and persuade through three classical appeals:

Also consider: direct address, inclusive pronouns (we, us, our) versus exclusive ones, and the reaction the speaker hopes to trigger.

Practice: identify the appeal

For each excerpt from the practice speech, decide which appeal is used most strongly — remember that appeals often work together, but usually one is dominant.

Language and rhetorical strategies

These are the devices and language features you will most often find — and need to analyse — in political and social speeches:

Naming a device is not analysing it

Language support

Use these sentence patterns to write like an analyst, not a storyteller. For each category, try the short exercise below the phrase list.

Common mistakes

These are the mistakes that most often weaken an otherwise solid speech analysis. For each one: spot the problem, then fix it.

Flashcards

Click, tap, or press Enter/Space when focused to flip each card.

Interactive exercises

Exercise A — Summary or analysis?

Decide whether each sentence merely summarises the content, or actually analyses function and effect.

Exercise B — Match evidence, technique and effect

For each quotation from the practice speech, choose the matching technique and the matching effect.

Exercise C — Complete the analytical sentence

Fill in each gap with a fitting word or short phrase (evidence, function, effect or intention).

Exercise D — Improve the analysis

Each sentence below is a weak piece of analysis. Choose the version that fixes it.

Exercise E — Structure the paragraph

Assign each sentence of this analytical paragraph to its correct place in the PEEL-based chain: Claim → Evidence → Technique → Explanation → Effect → Link.

Quiz

Eight questions covering the whole page. Each option is explained after you answer.

Choose a station

Write a full analytical paragraph

Task: Analyse how the speaker uses language, rhetorical strategies and the structure of the speech to persuade the audience to take action.