Rhetorical Analysis of The Space Shuttle Challenger speech

Being able to process thoughts and emotional responses is a huge challenge that only very few people are able to live up to. President Reagan’s speech after the crash of the Space Shuttle Challenger Mission is a perfect illustration of how through appropriate eulogy, political leaders are able to assist the people in processing emotional responses after unexpected and sudden calamities such as the Space Shuttle Challenger crash. In his capacity as the president, Reagan is able to effectively lead his people in mourning their national heroes. The year is 1986; on the 28th of January the Space Shuttle Challenger Mission is launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida at 11:38am. Aboard the shuttle are seven astronauts, among them Christa McAuliffe; a junior high school history teacher selected from thousands of other applicants to be the first civilian visitor to space.

Constrains in rhetorical situation are widely divided into personal and situational constrains. When utilized effectively, these constrains can help to stir up an audience hence preparing it to modify the situation (Smith, 2017). The audience of the speech comprised of millions of Americans from different walks of life; people who look up to the leaders they have committed to office to guide them through challenges such as this and to assure them that everything will be okay. In the audience were also hundreds of thousands of students, some of them with ambitions in the field of space science, and whose dreams might have been crushed when they watched their role models lose their lives in such a tragic fashion, and who were now reconsidering their ambitions for fear that in the course of time there would possibly be a repeat of the space shuttle crash.

As such, Reagan was faced with the responsibility of condoling with those affected by the tragedy, reassuring the public while also advocating for future space exploration. The use of rhetoric also helped in effective persuasion of the audience; Reagan rhetorically organized his speech so that it addressed all the important concerns. First, he acknowledged and empathized with the grief and pain that was being felt at the time: “Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country” (Reagan, 1986, 1. He then went ahead to offer his condolences to everybody that was affected by the tragedy: “For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy.

But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much” (Reagan, 1986, 3). While talks between the two countries to limit the production of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union were already starting to bear fruit, it was evident that the ensuing conflict between the two nations went beyond the ongoing issues on nuclear weapons and was really about the fight between good and evil. Through the speech, Reagan exposed the evils of the Soviet Union to the audience. He believed that America had the capacity to fight back and win this war using the lessons learnt during the darker times experienced by the nation in the past. While it may be assumed that the audience of Reagan’s speech was the people who had attended the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, the reality is that the speech was intended for a much larger audience.

It went beyond the citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of the Soviet Union who had especially been badly hit by the effects of bad governance. The address by Reagan therefore aimed at looking into those issues as well. In the speech, Reagan called for action to reduce the production of nuclear weapons both by the Soviet Union and the United States of America, the illegalization of abortion and the call for more harsh penalties for infanticide crimes. The speech by Reagan was undoubtedly very effective. Not only did it appeal to the American audience on matters pertaining to infanticide and abortion, it also brought to the attention of the world the evils of the Soviet Union and also triggered changes in foreign policy towards the Soviet Union.

The structure of the speech is largely rhetorical. An example of logos usage in the speech is where touches on the issue of infanticide giving clear explanations on what he is doing to address the issue: “I have taken the further step of requiring that each and every recipient of federal funds who provides health care services to infants must post and keep posted in a conspicuous place a notice stating that ‘discriminatory failure to feed and care for handicapped infants in this facility is prohibited by the federal law” (Reagan, 1983, 27) It is also seen when talking about reduction of nuclear weapons; he says that verification and compliance by the two countries would be required as a freeze on nuclear weapons alone would not be effective.

Reflection and Comparison of the Two Speeches The two speeches are both effective in appealing to their intended audiences and in passing across the intended messages. Apart from being done by the same person, the two speeches also bear some other similarities such as the fact that both of them are done in response to pressing issues affecting the public; the space shuttle tragedy in the first speech and abortion, infanticide and nuclear weapons in the second. Another similarity between the two is that they both make use of rhetorical devices such as ethos, logos, pathos and rhetorical structure to effectively appeal to the respective audiences. The main difference between them is that while the first speech is shorter, more direct and only addresses one issue; the space shuttle crash tragedy, the second is much longer and addresses several issues such as abortion, infanticide, the conflict between the Soviet Union and the US as well as the issue of nuclear weapons.