The poor people are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. The other day one of them came to thank and said: You people who have vowed chastity you are the best people to teach us family planning. Because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other. And I think they said a beautiful sentence. And these are people who maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home where to live, but they are great people. The poor are very wonderful people.


Above is Mother Teresa's acceptance speech from the Nobel Peace Prize. The purpose of the speech is to educate people to not have a grudge against the poor and to emphasize to her audience that they are good people. In her first sentence she uses a hyperbole and generalization by stating how the poor are 'very great people.' It is not morally correct to say that ALL poor people are 'great people' but by using this technique, she outlines how serious she is in getting her message across. By using this statement it encourages people to disagree with her statement which means that they become gripped to her words and when they are enticed it makes it easier for her to get her message across. The audience is a superior audience which is portrayed when Teresa says 'They can teach us...' The format of the text is basic which is appropriate for the context as the reader is only interested in the message, nothing else. The features that make it a written text is by Teresa's use of anecdotes. It is more likely for anecdotes to be used in a text that is spoken not written. In addition writing is set out in a more complex format than speech is, the grammatical structure is much more complex than speech. This speech has short sentences and repetition which is less likely to be used in a written text.