Elevating the Voices of the Unheard:

Analysis on Mia Birdsong’s speech ‘The Story We Tell about Poverty Isn’t True.’

In this speech, Mia Birdsong doesn’t focus on what is told about poverty and why it isn’t true. Instead, she attracts the audience with several true stories of her friends who are regarded as a poor and marginalized group, as well as her experiences from a single-mother child to a ‘‘shiny exception’’ (Speech 5:43). The speech is not only made for audience who are concerned with how to win the war against poverty in the United States or those who may have some preoccupation about poor people, but also for the minority people who suffer bias from others or feel inner deficiency, ‘‘broke but not broken’’ (Speech 5:43), who are still struggling to tackle poverty.

The chief aim of this speech is to change the minds of audiences; for different audience groups, Mia Birdsong has different targets. On the surface, she is trying to alter the way people think about poverty and propose her solution on eliminating it. In essence, she is taking the chance to voice out the positive side of the poor and also use herself as an example to motivate the people who are struggling poverty. She wants the marginalized communities to be confident and rally together so that the society can see them and hear them not from a partial angle, but with a fair and more complex view. To realize this aim, the speaker effectively applies mainly the rhetorical appeals of Ethos and Pathos, not much with the Logos, and deploys several rhetorical devices.

At the beginning, she starts the topic by relating it with what have been done for the last 50 years. By citing the focused fields such as ‘‘education, job creation, asset-building’’ while ‘‘efforts helped but not enough’’ (Speech 0:35), naturally and logically, it is agreed that people who are poor are indeed a neglected factor.

Instead of further explaining why the poor people should be considered as ‘‘the most powerful and practical recourse’’ (Speech 0:35), Mia Birdsong does not present any statistical evidence as applying the rhetorical appeal of logos, but turns the next ten minutes to an emotional feast with several beginning-hard but happy-ending stories, which obviously as the use the rhetorical appeal of pathos. The picture of her friends she presents is like sunshine that seems to have nothing related with poverty because everyone in it has a smile and seems hopeful towards life in future.

Just like the picture, the description of Jobana, Sintia and Bertha’s story is energetic and optimistic. Several rhetorical devises are adapted during the story-telling process. When explaining how three mothers come together and why the idea of a cleaning business starts, the content is mostly impersonal and focusing on the positive side, examples are ‘‘child care is expensive’’, ‘‘they want to contribute financially, too’’ (Speech 1:22). When illustrating how the cleaning business idea gets implemented, the sentence structure changes to short but powerful active sentences: ‘‘they hatched...they started…they plastered…they’d rotate…they split…’’ (Speech 1:48).

In the next story, Mia Birdsong continues to impact the emotions of the audiences with specific diction. The words describing Brianna’s personality are ‘‘sparkly, infectious, outgoing’’ (Speech 2:33). The simple example of Brianna helping Rosie adds favorable impression to her. With these background information, it is no strange feeling sympathetic for Brianna when heard she ‘‘started to struggle academically, growing frustrated’’, her mother ‘‘heartbroken’’; the girl ‘‘devastated’’and the mother ‘‘felt helpless and overwhelmed and alone’’ (Speech 3:04). With these emotionally-charged words, Mia Birdsong has created a quietly worried atmosphere amoug the audiences. It is so naturally that when a greeting of ‘‘how are you’’ is heard, a ‘‘burst into tears’’ is no wonder (Speech 4:00). The deficiency of physical wealth may be different among people, but the lack of emotional support sometimes in life is universal for humanity. Within a few sentences, Theresa turns her role from a helpless mother getting support by sharing experience to a strong and capable woman organizing such groups to offer support to others. The impersonal description of the process drags audience from the previous sympathetic blue mood back to normal.

The third story is lovely and vibrant. Imagery as a rhetorical devise is apparently used. The café called BlackStar is like a vivid picture presenting to us. ‘‘Once inside, you can order some…’’ (Speech 4:45) brings everybody into the café. By nominating the particular foods served in it, we can feel the hospitality and personality of its owner. ‘‘Baakir and his parter... with their baby girl…serving up… teaching a child…or painting a sign...’’ (Speech 5:10), by using the present progressive tense, the scenery of the place with people helping each other is like a lively TV show to the audience.

After telling the stories of her friends, Mia Birdsong began to talk about her own stories. From here, the rhetorical appeal of Ethos is successfully applied. The parallel sentences such as ‘‘I have worked with and learned…’’, ‘‘I have organized against…’’, ‘‘I have worked with young people who….’’, ‘‘I have learned from families who…’’ (Speech 5:43) help to convince the audience that the speaker’s authoritativeness in telling stories about the poor people is beyond doubt. The speaker repeated point out what she sees from the poor people is bright and promising, and which is quite common, not exceptional. The first person narrative also adds credentials to the speaker.

The following paragraph is an emotional appeal because the speaker talks about her childhood, something people all have experienced and remembered. Meanwhile, the financial difficulty in her childhood is acting as a connection to her and the topic, also maybe some of the audience. ‘‘We were poor when I was a kid.’’ (Speech 7:29) How many people will speak out the same remarks when they hear the illustration of a kid from a low-income family learns to be self-reliance in daily life? The speaker creates a retrospective appeal for audiences to think of their child life. Memories arouse feelings, but that’s not enough. To evoke further thinking, Mia has made a contrast between her childhood life and her present life, between what she had to do at eight while what her daughter doesn’t have to at the same age.

Logically, a question of why pops up on every listener’s mind. To reply to is, the speaker avoids using a direct answer at first. Instead, she denies of being more talented or having a more hard-working mother, in a way to connect her example back with the stories she told about her friends in marginalized communities. The rhetorical device of simile is applied when she compared the innovative and busy people with the ‘‘most revered and most rewarded CEOs’’ (Speech 8:05). She emphasizes the marginalized groups are just as talented and hard-working as our conventionally-considered successful elite. Through the parallel sentences ‘‘Marginalized communities are full of smart, talented people, hustling and working and innovating…’’, ‘‘tapping into their resilience…’’, ‘‘applying their savvy intelligence…’’, ‘’doing for themselves and for others…’’, a flourishing and energetic community is presented to the audience.

In the following paragraphs, Mia Birdsong reveals the answer and concludes that hard work is not the reason for success because most of the poor people also work hard. By addressing the negative stories told about the low-income people who seems to have various problems, she states that some opinions may be ‘‘quarter-truths and limited plot lines’’ (Speech 10:10). She claims it has become the impediment to dig out real facts and effective solutions. She makes speculations that the society should have more trust and confidence on the poor people. A metaphor is applied when describing the efficient measure as ‘‘fuel’’ and the endeavor by poor people as ‘‘the already burning flames’’ (Speech 11:00). Furthermore, by citing the phenomena of Silicon Valley, which wins investment and beliefs, the speaker calls for similar attention or support to the poor people. A metaphor refers to such strategies as ‘‘incubators and accelerators’’ (Speech 11:41).

For the last four minutes, Mia Birdsong changes the target audience from those who are concerned with poverty issue to those poor people with stories she tells. She elevates the speech to a lofty theme. By quoting the masterpiece in various fields, from people who belongs to the marginalized groups but wins respect and recognition all over the world, she is trying to convince the listeners that with so many elites sparkling in every field but coming from their group, everybody should be confident and have self-reliance to change one’s life. Emotionally, she continuously to influence the audience with the touching moment in daily life like ‘‘ look at the hands of your grandmother or into the eyes of someone who loves you ’’(Speech 12:50). Repetition of inspring words are used; ‘‘We are magic’’ (Speech 12:30) apprears twoice in the same paragraph. She calls for the marginazlied people to work together to be innovative and she pleads for people to think for new strategies. The rhetorical devise of metaphor can be found in the sentence ‘‘ instead of trying to alter the fabirc of existing ways, let’s weave and cut some fierce new cloth’’ (Speech 13:10). In the last paragraph, she compares the fairness towards marginalized people as the start of the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa.

Up to now with many deployment the rhetorical appeal of Pathos, Mia Birdsong has fulfilled the primary target ---to persuade people to rethink of some new strategies involving marginalized people being decision makers or implementers or executors on their own specific ideas. Meanwhile, she also established her persona with the audiences as one of the low-income, marginalized group members in the past, and now a well-known, competent and influential person. She elevates the importance of hearing the true stories of marginalized people as the start for United States to realize the promise of liberty and justice for all people. She also cites real examples to prove her opinions, this is to some extend logically persuasive. The speech is generally successful by emotionally encouraging. However, if she could backup her perspective with more solid statistics and figures, instead of several true stores, it would be more convincing.