Prompt #3

In Wallace's speech he is speaking to college graduates at their commencement ceremony and the purpose of his speech is to give advice. And so he has to make his speech something that everyone there can relate to and use in their day to day life, so he had to use language that wouldn't be too hard to remember; something that would stick with them without them realizing it. Wallace used very basic language and was very conversational, so the audience wouldn't tune him out and not hear the advice that he feels is genuinely important. He doesn't want the graduates to walk away without hearing the words and advice he finds to be the most valuable. Morrison, however, is not trying to give advice, she is accepting a very prestigious award. In her acceptance speech she spoke of something that she is very passionate about: language. And because this is a very prestigious award, and she has just won it, she uses this time to make people realize that the English language, the reason she just won this award, is dying, and that we, the younger generation, have a duty to preserve it. Morrison doesn't want to see the English language die because we refuse to use it in the way it was intended, and so she tells a story that makes us think, a story that shows how easy it is for a language to die.