Rhetoric: Motivate: Churchill & Gandhi

In this lesson, we will examine the opening of Winston Churchill's iconic 'we shall fight them on the beaches' speech, and consider how he used quite an unusual way of motivating his audience.

In this lesson, we will explore how Churchill's use of rhetoric motivated the masses. We will consider how Churchill attempted to convince his audience to remain strong, despite the many hardships of war, using language to recognise the achievement of the British troops. We will examine the pivotal moments of Churchill's speech to consider to what extent his speech was successful rhetoric in action.

In this lesson, we will study the final segment of Churchill's speech. We will consider how his use of rhetoric gives us hints that his audience was not just the British people, and that there was far more to play for here and he spoke these words in 1940.

In this lesson, we will learn about Mohandas Gandhi, a peaceful protestor who believed all living things should be equal. We will think about how his reputation as a peacemaker is emphasised within his speech and how this may have influenced his audience. We will explore how Gandhi used the leading principles of Ahimsa to deliver his incredible Quit India speech, and how his use of language changed Indian history.

In this lesson, we will continue to study Gandhi's Quit India speech, and understand how he managed to empower an audience that may not have been or felt empowered at the time. We will consider how Gandhi outlined a clear purpose within his speech, and explore how this was key to creating a strong sense of ethos with the crowd.