The first part of the speech has an introductory function. In this part, Obama thanks all of his collaborators, but, more importantly, his wife and his family. Right at the start of his speech, in front of the whole world, he feels the need to demonstrate his love towards his wife. This is because the love between a man and a woman is the base to create a stable relationship and even more a family. And the Family is right at the foundation of the whole society. Obama wants to underline that he know which the core of American society is and cares about it.


The body of the speech starts pointing out what the real purpose of the election is: it is not just a choice between two candidates or two parties, a “trivial thing”, but a fundamental choice between two different visions for the future.
This is said for two reasons:
- firstly, to persuade the voters to acknowledge the importance of the situation, and push them to take a decision and vote even if they may have considered elections only distractions from America’s real problems
- secondly, to create a way to distinct his party from the other and introduce the first comparison between the two fronts.
The language is very simple and concrete (e.g. quoting ‘candidates’ before saying ‘parties’). Sentences are short and simple, to catch the listener’s attention, and the repetition of the words ‘choice between’ focus the audience on the key concept: they have to make a choice and he’s going to give them information to help them choosing.

In the following paragraph, Obama starts analyzing his base values and future vision for America. He recalls to the audience the great deeds of American society, its achievements, quoting the difficulties they had to face (war, death), too. Just like a chief, emboldening his army’s spirits recalling the past glory and victories, before asking them the effort to face other hard times.
He recalls the values American society is based on: hard work and responsibility. But the repetition of the word ‘fair’, and the underlining that ‘hard work will pay off’, ‘responsibility will be rewarded’ and ‘everyone plays by the same rules’, point up that the ‘basic bargain’ American people had achieved was the Equality. That is also the main value Obama had seen slipping away.
Obama himself resorts to his family’s personal experiences to give examples of the progress of American history. That is both to point out that his experiences are strictly comparable to the ones of quite any American (they are all equal) and that he understands the needs of the people and the importance of these values.
As always the language is concrete and even figurative, to create long lasting images in the listener’s mind.
After the flourishing past parenthesis, Obama directly shifts to more recent happenings: the ones that have lead America to a worst social and economical situation and that have pushed him to run for President. These events have produced the opposite results of the previous ones: loss of home, money and work. These are the problems America still has to face.

In the following paragraph Obama briefly explains the opponent’s point of view on America’s situation. They are well aware of what the problems of America are and were ready to talk about what is wrong, but they did not give any solution. Obama’s words are very ironical: at the start he calls them ‘friends’, later he uses a clearly ironic dialogue to explain Republicans’ economical philosophy. But right at the centre of this ironically funny and apparently light part of the speech, finds place a bitter charge: they didn’t say anything because they don’t want people to know their plans. And they don’t want it because they only have their usual past solutions: tax cut. At first, it sounds appealing to the audience but it eventually results into a double-edged weapon: Obama points out that he himself has used them to help the middle-class and the small businesses, but also highlights the limits of this means.
With this paragraph Obama both underlines the disadvantages of his opponents’ plans and their loss of responsibility. The same responsibility he is demonstrating illustrating his plans and taking note of his past actions. The same responsibility that is rewarded in the American system he wants to restore.
Obama’s reflection about Republican strategy ends by saying that it would end up doing the exact contrary of what should be done, it would weaken instruction, science, work and the general situation of families, going not far from the situation that was after the Great Recession. On the other hand, his and his party’s objective is to go forward, towards a best future. The repetition of the pronoun ‘we’ wants to underline again the principles of equality and union at the base of his program and his closeness to the whole American people.

Obama’s speech is particularly focused on middle-class voters, as we can see from the constant references to the workers in the examples or the explicit quote when talking about the tax cuts. Another big portion of voters he is appealing to is the women: he quotes them in many examples and constantly refers to them both in the past lines and in the coming parts of the speech.

------------------

After having delineated his future plans, Obama goes on clarifying some points, in order to prevent possible objections. He has never said that his plan is quicker or easier to follow than the one of his opponents: he takes his responsibilities and takes distance from the other party. ‘You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear’ is in clear antithesis with the Republicans’ way of acting just because ‘they want your vote’. And the repetition of the word ‘truth’ recalls for antithesis the will of the opponents to hide their plans from the voters.
In addition, he recognizes that is will take time to recover from a crisis that has developed itself along decades.
Again Obama lists the values of American society, but this time not as past banners, but as requirements to overcome the crisis. He also quotes Roosevelt’s as an example of government that managed to overcome a huge crisis in the same way, as an argumentation to support his ideas.
Then comes another encouragement part of the speech, where the President expresses his positivity towards the challenge, and renews his invitation to choose this kind of future, closing the first part of his speech. The repetition of the words ‘I’m asking you’ underlines that the whole responsibility of the vote and the future of the nation depends on the audience.
Again Obama lists all the goals of his plan, underlining its reality and achievability. That’s the reason why he is running as President again.

In the following paragraphs, Obama describes what he has actually already done to better the situation, in particular as regarding work. Creation of new workplaces in America, better products created with hard work and smart minds. This is in antithesis with what said before (‘good jobs were starting to move overseas’, ‘compete with scientists and engineers coming out of China’), this is what he has already concretely done to change American situation, these were the objectives he had when he first ran for President and he underlines that he has achieved them. In this context, the word ‘proud’ (referred to the words ‘Made in America’) also refers to his actual feeling about what he had done.