Thursday, 19.
October y
“Chocolate biscuits” speech
Tasks
a) The purpose of this speech is to deliver the speaker’s point of view to the audience
through a metaphor (compares biscuits to an important issue, without saying about it
straightforward and not using linking words such as “such as” or “like”). Probably the
speaker meant the consumerist society in general by “chocolate biscuits”, points out how
much time we spend doing things which are not really important.
b) The speaker knows the subject well (knowledge of the subject), speaks without unneces-
sary pauses, he speaks clearly (clarity). The speaker raises his voice at the important mo-
ments in order to make it more emotional and make people get more involved. He also
smiles at his audience, uses humour (such as in his “mistake” when he calls Great Britain
a Great Biscuit). In his speech the author also uses pauses, such as instead of saying
“Chocolate biscuits” he makes a pause between the 2 words and says it as “Chocolate.
Biscuits”. He adds such pauses to make an accent on each word. This is referred to par-
alanguage—non-lexical ways of communicating by speech.
The speaker also uses a lot of repetitions, for example, he repeats the phrase “Chocolate. Bis-
cuits” twice: one follows another.
The speaker uses hypophora: he asks questions and then immediately answers them: “And
how did I feel when I first bit into this first delicious chocolate digestive, you ask? Well, I felt
privileged, I felt renewed, I felt special”.
The other device is hyperbole, when a speaker exaggerated a significance of something, such
as: “And on that day, I knew my life would never be
the same again” (speaking about the first time he tried a chocolate biscuit).
Alliteration is used by the author in order to make an accent on the specific words:
“The crunchy oatmeal butteriness of a biscuit actually combined with the creamy sweet
yumminess of chocolate”.
Another rhetorical device that is used here is logos—an appeal to the audience’s sense of
logic, such as in “Just imagine, for the moment. How different your life would be if you
hadn’t spent so much of it scoffing down those delicious disks of danger!”.
In “Now on one hand, chocolate biscuits are a delicious, nutritious snack food. On the other,
they are a dangerous parasite gnawing at the very heart, the very fabric of our society” an-
tithesis is used: the contrasting of one idea with another opposite idea.
1
Amplification is also a very effective device, which the speaker uses in his speech “chocolate
biscuits”. One example is “And I'm stronger- significantly stronger, for it”. The speaker adds
more information to his point.
The closing words “Ban the biscuit! Ban the biscuit! BAN THE BISCUIT!” Make a tricolon:
a list of 3 parallel clauses (in this case it’s the same clause repeating trice) without an inter-
ruption.
This speech is made to deliver the idea to the audience, and to make that the speaker is mak-
ing arguments all along the speech, to convince the listeners.
c) This speech had a great effect on me: I was involved and listened to every singe word.
The way the man was speaking made me listen to him: the speech was very clear. And it
made me think, think every time he asked a question, even though it was immediately fol-
lowed by the answer.
d) Satire—“the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize peo-
ple's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical
issues”.
Parody—“an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exag-
geration for comic effect”.
Pastiche—“an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period”.
Spoof—“a humorous imitation of something, typically a film or a particular genre of film, in
which its characteristic features are exaggerated for comic effect”.
I think this speech correlates the more with the term “satire”, because the speaker uses hu-
mour, irony, exaggeration and ridicule to talk about an important topic that concerns the soci-
ety.
