Obama's Speech

     Obama spends most of the introduction of his speech building ethos.  He obviously has ethos as the President, but that isn't the type of ethos he is trying to project in this speech.  He says, "I don't want to be just another adult who stands up and lectures you like you're just kids."  His goal is to help the students relate to him and trust him.  Obama succeeds in this matter by speaking about his early school years and extracurricular activities.  He also uses a lot of pathos when he uses humor to build support and talks about how students have to make sacrifices in the current economy.
     He then begins to argue about how students should use school as a tool to help them achieve success later in life  One part of this is that students should always attempt to do their best.  A strategy that he uses to help his message reach a lot of kids is to make sure he doesn't define being a good student as getting good grades.  He appeals to basic qualities, such as determination, that everyone can improve regardless of their academic abilities.
     Another part of his argument about making school worthwhile is to use it as a sort of testing grounds for what you may like.  He brings up examples of classes that may inspire certain occupations.  This point is a great example of how he keeps the feel of his speech very positive.  He doesn't say, "This class will inspire you to be a minimum wage factory worker" and he doesn't mention jobs that may be controversial because his goal is to inspire students.
     Most of his speech is a call to action for students across the country.  Because of this, he strongly appeals to emotions of determination and pride.   He speaks very often about responsibility and tries to make students feel important.  While the skeleton of his argument is a pretty basic logical pathway, he focuses a lot more on pathos than logos.  He brings up student examples, but they aren't mainly used to logically convince students to be like the examples.  He can't possibly make that connection, the examples are extreme outliers.  However, he can instill determination, and even a sense of competitiveness by using the examples.
     Throughout the speech, Obama's tone stays very calm.  He does slightly raise his voice when he gets to an important point, but not anywhere near the extent to which MLK does.  His movements are also very calm and basic because he wants the students to focus on what he is saying instead of what he is doing.  His speech seems to flow together between his main points.  There were signposts when he changed topics, but they weren't very obvious at all.  I believe he was trying to replicate having a normal conversation with the students instead of making it clear that he was giving a huge, important speech.