While Morrison’s speech was about children trying to obtain
wisdom from an elderly women, the audience she was directing it towards was
that of other Nobel Prize winners and her peers. When writing her speech she
was expecting her audience to interpret it at a much higher level then Wallace
did with his audience and to get across a message that she herself already knew.
In Morrison’s speech she discusses how if new generations let the languages of
the past fall to the wayside we as a society will lose a key part of who we
are, that if this language is lost society will forget where it has come from
and not value all the lessons learned along the way. Wallace on the other hand
intended to get a message across to his audience of graduating seniors. This
can be seen in the way in which he wrote his speech, by giving a scenario that
is easily relatable and thought provoking. Wallace intended for his audience to
come away with the feeling that they do not have to conform to a definition
their society has given them. That they may look at the world in any way they
see fit, but, he does warn that not everyone may agree with how they view the
world be it because of religion, social status, or how important monetary
wealth is to them. Unlike Morrison, Wallace was incredibly blunt with his
message and had to be to truly have his audience understand him.
I agree that the intended audience does have a great impact on how both the authors of "This is Water" and "Morrison Nobel Lecture" go about writing their speeches. This seems like such a simple and basic concept to think about, but despite these facts I never really considered that while reading both of these speeches. After this being pointed out I can definitely see how the intended audience effects the format of how both "This is Water" and "Morrison Nobel Lecture" were written. I can also see how this factor effects the overall feel of what the authors are trying to say.
ReplyDeleteI agree the audience in which these stories were written for defiantly had a great impact on how they were written, while Morrison’s story had more room for interpretation because the audience was a room full of highly educated people. But Wallace was presenting to a high school. He puts his story in a very relatable and understandable way making his point easy to understand, hoping that he would change the way these seniors looked at other people when they are older. Morrison on the other hand was talking to a much older crowd and while he pointed out a valid problem, it was just that, there was nothing that his audience could change.
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