The text is an argumentative text, this means that the writer poses a theses and give explanations and examples to support his opinion.

This is T.S. Eliot's speech in a German radio and it broadcast during the second World War.

The poet starts posing the thesis: the English language is the richest for poetry. After that he qualifies the statement "this doesn't mean that English has produced the greatest poets or amount of poetry" and he clarifies that English is the richest language for poetry because it has the largest vocabulary. Eliot supports the previous statement giving examples: the richness is due to the variety of elements of which English is made of. In addition to make the reader's attention he introduces the audience to his speech "you and we have in common". Then he gives a further clarification to his previous statement: the English language is also rich in his rhythmic variety and gives examples to support his statement. He gives two restatement to reinforce his idea and because of this is a speech and repetition needs to fix the ideas in the audience's mind.

After this he gives a statement "it is generally thought that the greatest peoples excel in one art" and provides examples to this statement, but he disagrees with this statement so he refuses this and tries to change the audience's mind giving examples: poetry is generally linked to England but in the second half of 19^th century it excelled in France. There's another refutation: a nation which lads in a particular art form in a particular period does not necessarily produce the greatest artists and provides examples in order to convince the audience.

He concludes with a statement which reinforce the idea of a modern language, which is able to receive and assimilate influences from abroad and go back and learn from its own sources.