How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers

¿How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

Motivational speeches have been an element of inspiration during thousands of years. This type of speech has as its main purpose to produce a feeling of unity, pride and joy, but most importantly to generate catharsis in the audience. Throughout time, motivational speeches have evolved into a rhetorical weapon that has been heavily used to motivate and harangue sport athletes. This can be evidenced in Oliver Stone’s film “Any Given Sunday” (1999), when coach Tony D’Amato delivers his “Inch by inch” speech to motivate his football team. This monologue has become one of the great exponents of motivational speeches, as it has been used in Super Rugby advertisements. However, motivational speeches are not only employed in the field of sports, as they can be applied to many life situations, such as war.

In this paper, the main purpose will be to compare how a football player and a World War II soldier can perceive Tony D’Amato’s speech differently.

In first place, I would like to state the principal and most important difference in the interpretation of this speech regarding a football player and a war soldier. On one hand, the football player receives the message as a motivator to win and do everything to succeed in his respective sport area. On the other hand, a WW2 soldier may perceive this speech differently, as he captures a message that encourages him not only to win, but also to survive and to be willing to die in order to complete his purpose. In other words, the speech has a much more literal meaning for the soldier than for the football athlete, as the player’s life is not in jeopardy, contrary to the soldier’s situation, as an inch can really be the difference between living and dying.

Secondly, I would like to analyse D’Amato’s application of Greek rhetorical concepts of ethos, pathos and logos and how they apply differently to Athletes and soldiers. Regarding ethos, Tony D’Amato talks about all the negative things he has lived throughout his life and how he learned from his experiences that you have to work to achieve what you want. This resource gives him a more confident, wise image that irradiates confidence and plausibility to his pupils. As for the pathos concept, D’Amato delivers his message relying heavily on emotions, as he utilizes concepts such as “living or dying”, “hell and light” and life as a game of inches. The use of these emotional elements contributes to generate the previously mentioned catharsis in the players, as they connect with the speaker feelings, which have a deep impact in them. However, Al Pacino not only uses his emotion during his speech, as we can see the logos concept in various logical statements he makes during his rhetorical masterpiece. Logos can be clearly seen at the end of the speech, as Pacino states a series of logical arguments such “That’s a team gentlemen, and either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals”. In this quote we can see the logos concept, as football is a team sport and one player cannot win by himself, because he needs his teammates to achieve his purpose: victory. From a soldier perspective, the speaker needs to rely strongly on the pathos resource, as soldiers need to take their emotions to the limit, in order to enter the battlefield and realize that this is more than just a physical war, that the soldier with the strongest mentality and greatest desire to “climb out of hell” will ultimately lie victorious in the battlefield. On the flipside, a motivational speech oriented to a football player does not necessarily need to rely on pathos, as the ethos and logos concepts are vital. The importance of ethos in sports is that if the speaker does not show credibility, authority and confidence, the player will not receive the message in a proper way, because not only will he not be motivated and perform badly, he will also will not have any real purpose to fight for in the field besides keeping his job. As for logos, the main importance of the concept in football is that a motivational speech must keep things in a realistic atmosphere, because to trying to motivate just one football player and not the entire team will not only be inefficient, but it will also be illogical, as football is a team sport and a game of inches.

Finally, I would like to analyse how two quotes present in the speech a football player and a soldier can interpret differently. The first quote I would like to analyse is: “We are in hell right now, gentlemen believe me and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our

...