American Independence By Courteney and Charlotte

The text we studied was a speech titled “A Charge” which was made to the first students to graduate from the University of Philadelphia in 1757.

Genre

• The genre of the text is a speech, specifically written for university graduates.

Audience

• The speech appears to be aimed at very educated individuals as it has been specifically written for an audience of university graduates.

Purpose• To inform them that they have the “world at their feet” and

when they graduate they will have many opportunities, with much of the speech linking the students new-found freedom/wisdom and America’s Independence in 1776

Grammar • Capitalisation of nouns• ‘Youth’ ‘Pleasure’ ‘Hopes’

Semantics • Meaning change : ‘suffer me’ in 1757 this meant allow me rather than put up with or doing something without wanting too.

• We still use this connective in writing and speech today “on the other hand” showing that language has changed in parts but still phrases are the same now.

Lexis for the genre • Spoken text in a written form this may be why there are ‘---’ in

it. These could have been little reminders for when the reader had to pause or it could have been written up while the speech was taking place and this is where the pauses were.

• Starting with ‘GENTLEMEN’ and this is too the whole hall of graduates so this shows that there were only male graduates at this time, showing that women did not go to this university

• Before October 1920, women were not allowed to become members of the University or to graduate.

• From the late 1870s, women had attended lectures, taken examinations, and had gained honours in those examinations. They were, however, unable to receive the degree to which, had they been men, their examinations would have entitled them.

• This was long after when this text was written.

• Elysian is related to or a characteristic of heaven or paradise

• It was used a lot more in the 1700’s and 1800’s compared to what it was used today

Pragmatics• The main theme of this text is on how the graduates are

free – “the free spirit that it breathes permits us not to bind you to us by the ordinary ties of oaths and promises”, and are about to step out into the big, wide world – “you are about to step into life, and embark in all its busy scenes”. • This obviously relates to their freedom from university

(which is still often the theme for graduation speeches nowadays), but may also relate to the independence of America as a whole, meaning the speech could be applied to a wider audience than just the university graduates, and in fact has a different meaning than primarily perceived.

Pragmatics (continued)

• In 1776, after the text was written it was announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire – “American Independence”.• As they were no longer ruled by the British, this must have

completely changed the lives of the Americans, as displayed in this text with its theme of freedom.

Lexis • Educated and Polysyllabic; due to the context. • The text would have been /composed by an educated individual

(most likely a professor at the university), and read to a group of other educated people – the university graduates.

• For example: “…principles of Virtue and Goodness”, “Oh alas” “Most buoyant Hopes”, “endeavoured”

OrthographyLong ‘S’ In our chosen text the long ‘S’ appears regularly throughout in words such as “First”, “Praise” and “Promises”.

Orthography• The Long ‘S’• Was formerly used where ‘s’ occurred in the middle or at the

beginning of a word • In Britain and in the United States, the long ‘s’ stopped being

used between 1795 and 1810.• This change may have been spurred by the fact that long ‘s’

looks somewhat like an ‘f’ (in both its Roman and italic forms), whereas the short ‘s’, used today, did not have this disadvantage, making it easier to identify, especially for people with visual problems.

Orthography• The speech displays that “American English” may have started

developing, as ‘American spellings’ of words are used.• For example, “Honours” (in British English) is spelt “Honors”.

• Most scholars have roughly located a “split off” point between American and British English as the mid-18th-Century, which makes sense as this was around the time that this particular text was written. But as a whole, American English started going its own course around the time of the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), possibly showing why “Honors” is one of the only words in this text which is not spelt in Standard ‘British’ English.