How to analyze political speeches
(Political) speeches aim at convincing an audience of the speaker's position, winning them over to his/her side. Very often, the speaker tries to persuade the listeners by appealing to their feelings going as far as trying to manipulate the audience. In any case, the speaker wants to present his/her opinion as positively as possible.
In addition, speeches are presented orally and the listeners, unlike readers, have to be able to follow the argumentation right away. All this makes the analysis of a speech somewhat special and distinct from that of other non-fictional texts.
1.) Before actually reading a speech, gather information about speaker, audience, topic(s), situation, time and place of speech in order to get a first idea of the speaker's intention. You may have background knowledge to refer to and there may also be some facts given in the annotations.