Description
For your allusion analysis, you will choose either Barack Obama’s 2008 New Hampshire speech, Martin Luther King
Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, or President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, which are all full of allusions. Once
you have chosen the speech you wish to analyze, you will pick three to five allusions (this can include moments of
intertextuality) from that speech and analyze their effect on the speech.
Your audience: Your audience listened to and read your chosen speech. But they did not pick up on the allusions in
the speech and do not know how it adds to the meaning of the speech.
Your purpose: To analyze the speech’s use of allusions and to explain to your audience how they add to the speech’s
meaning and purpose.
Questions to consider as you analyze:
1. What do the references achieve or aim to achieve?
• What is the impact of the reference on the readers or listeners, cognitively, socially, and in other words?
• What is the function of the reference or what does it do?
• What is the wider impact of the reference, beyond the individual speaker and listener?
• What other impacts or functions can be identified?
2. How do the references achieve their function?
• What is the core meaning of the reference, and how does it add to the overall function of the speech?
• What is the history of the reference, and what/how does that add to the context of the speech?
• What about the structure of the reference adds to the function?
3. Why do the references seek to do this?
• What are the socio-political and ideological underpinnings of the text?
• What do the references seek to foreground and why?
Note: For this short assignment, it will be impossible to fit all of the answers to all of the questions above in two pages;
Therefore, for each allusion that you analyze, pick one of the questions in each section and answer that. This means
that each allusion should have three questions you focus on answering. You do not have to pick the same three
questions to answer for each allusion. Pick the questions that you feel would lead to the best analysis of the allusion
you are focusing on.
Suggested Organization:
I. Introduction
a. Briefly (one to two sentences) introduce your chosen speech.
b. Address the context this speech was given in, focusing on location, speaker, listeners.
c. Tell the reader what you think the purpose of the speech was.
II. First part of body (this could include one paragraph or a few small paragraphs).
a. Introduce the allusion you are discussing first.
b. Answer a question from the first group of questions pertaining to the aim of the allusion.
c. Answer a question from the second group of questions pertaining to the How of the allusion.
d. Answer a question from the third group of questions pertaining to the why of the allusion. Tie it back
to the overall purpose of the speech.
III. Second part of body (this could include one paragraph or a few small paragraphs).
a. Introduce the allusion you are discussing second.
b. Answer a question from the first group of questions pertaining to the aim of the allusion.
c. Answer a question from the second group of questions pertaining to the How of the allusion.
d. Answer a question from the third group of questions pertaining to the why of the allusion. Tie it back
to the overall purpose of the speech.
IV. Third part of body (this could include one paragraph or a few small paragraphs).
a. Introduce the allusion you are discussing third.
b. Answer a question from the first group of questions pertaining to the aim of the allusion.
c. Answer a question from the second group of questions pertaining to the How of the allusion.
d. Answer a question from the third group of questions pertaining to the why of the allusion. Tie it back
to the overall purpose of the speech.
V. Fourth part of body
a. If you choose to analyze four allusions, this is where you will talk about the fourth instance. Follow
the same pattern as the first three parts of the body.
VI. Fifth part of body
a. If you choose to analyze five allusions, this is where you will talk about the fifth instance. Follow the
same pattern as the first three parts of the body.
VII. Conclusion
a. Talk broadly about how the allusions together add to the speaker’s overall purpose.
b. What would happen/ what would be different if the speaker didn’t use any allusions?
c. Talk broadly about the effectiveness and purpose of allusions and intertextuality.
