Rhetorical Criticism by Savannah Dyer

Photo credit: https://wfpusa.org/articles/importance-women-food-and-agriculture/

Emma Watson’s 2014 HeForShe Campaign Speech at the United Nations

In her 2014 HeForShe campaign speech to the United Nations, rhetor Emma Watson, British actress and U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador, officially launches HeForShe and extends a formal invitation to men worldwide to become involved in the feminism movement. Her audience included many more than just those at the event. The HeForShe campaign hoped to reach as many as possible with their message.

The purpose of this speech was to launch the HeForShe campaign and to highlight how gender inequality was a men’s issue as well as a women’s issue. Emma’s nervousness at the beginning of her speech is soon gone as she passionately stresses the importance of gender equality. Her use of memory is excellent; although she approaches the podium with notes, she does not look at them once, instead choosing to look into the audience and make a connection. This makes her speech much more genuine.

Her uses of ethos, logos, and pathos are successful, as she effectively uses each to further drive her points. Emma uses her experience as a child actress that was sexualized at a young age to bring awareness, as well as how her friends, both male and female, were affected by gender inequality growing up. She uses logos by presenting statistics for the future world, one being that, “15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children.” Emma invokes pathos as she asks the audience to ask themselves, “If not you, then who? If not now, when?” Emma is confident that with men joining the feminist movement, the world will finally see a change. She implores men to join not only for their daughters, wives, and mothers, but also for their sons, so that everyone can be free of gender inequality.

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