Noel Pearson
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Noel Pearson
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HOMEWORK:
Watch the video to the right. What does this tell you about Pearson and his personal context? |
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Context:
- highly regarded Aboriginal leader and calls Cape York "his country"
- delivered his speech at the Chancellor's Club Dinner at the University of Western Sydney to a group of academics and visitors (including then PM John Howard
- studied law and history at the University of Sydney
- Makes links to a number of contextual issues: the Mabo Case (1992); then PM John Howard has criticised certain view about Aboriginal history, especially the 'black armband view of history." This derogatory term was applied to the work of historians who saw the history of relations between indigenous Australians and their colonisers as a story of dispossession, exploitation and violence. Howard implied that the guilt for such actions was now being laid upon the whole non-Aboriginal population
Common techniques in the speech:
- humble opening - declares that his argument is not flawless
- reference to politically different / similarly minded people - to create a balanced argument
- statistics - used as exemplum to strengthen his argument/point
- direct quotation - he quotes Howard, John Laws to convey"commonly" held or perceived public opinion
- allusion - to the work of scholars, such as Geoffrey Blainey's "black armband view of history"
- sarcasm - words such as 'fiction', 'myth', and 'the invisibility of Aboriginal people' when speaking about Aboriginal history
- rhetorical questions - used to engage the audience, make them think about the issues e.g., ‘how do we explain the past to our children?'
- historical allusions - Gallipoili, the Kokoda Trail - used to connect Australia's 'collective consciousness' includes the past and therefore, it should include the Aboriginal past
| Pearson Context.docx |