Freedom of Speech and Right to offend

Freedom of speech and right to offend

The columnist Brendan O’Neil, starts off his speech “Freedom of speech and Right to offend”, by naming three historical events as an example of offensive behavior at Oxford University which had a positive outcome in the long run for our development as a society and norms. The first example was John Wycliffe that was expelled from the University for translating the bible from Latin to English, and so was Percy Shelley for supporting the atheist thinking. And the lastly “The Chameleon” was banned for publication for inclusion of homosexual content.

The speaker Brendan O’Neil includes these examples to use in his argue in favor of his statement “right to offend” as a part of his free speech. According to Brendan O'Neil, the right to offend in the late modern society not only a right but also our duty as an individual, to further help humanity's development.

Brendan O'Neil’s does also include hidden argumentation in the first part of his speech. When he uses the hidden argumentation, he makes it possible to introduce his perspective through arguments and examples that leads to the receiver draw the same conclusion as the speaker wants them to understand.

“One historical account describes how Shelley’s pamphlet caused maximum offense. It describes how fellows and students at New College swept the pamphlets up and disposed of them – much like today’s students sweep up copies of the Sun, which they also describe as causing maximum offense. (ll. 10-13)

The first part of the speech includes exclusively hidden argumentation as he presents certain examples of the university’s censorship, which are designed to illustrate how cencuration at university is an infringement of our rights and contradicts the university's purpose of promoting the humanity’s development. The example thus shows how he uses the hidden argumentation as he shows the example of censorship that could have cost an important piece of our story, which makes the receiver to conclude that the university's cecur is a negative aspect of Oxford, as well as showing that we have not learned from history as we should.

On the other side, O’Neil also uses direct argumentation “Offensiveness is not just something we have to begrudgingly accept. Offensiveness is the motor of human progress.” (ll. 31-32). In this example does the speaker openly states his point on the right to offend. This is a possible way of arguing because he knows his audience virtually will be neutral or positive about his message and it will further make Brendan O’Neil sound more confident of his state of conclusion.

If we look on the rhetorical aspect of the speech, the most important devises he uses in “Freedom of Speech and Right to Offend” are repetitions, allusions and the use of the appeal forms ect.