It is thought that to become a good politician excellent oral and written skills have to be acquired. People from the streets need to understand what those who have power are trying to say. According to Roman Ingarden, one of the most representative members of the Reader-Response Criticism, for an aesthetic object to be understood it has to be read by a competent reader, however, if the reader is not competent enough or the message is not as clear as it should, the communicative function will not be achieved. Winston Churchill delivered three different speeches during the course of the Battle of France, among them, the most important, “We shall fight on the beaches”, where he explained people the delicate situation of the moment, the inevitable surrender of France and the possibility of Germany attacking Britain.

He needed people to be a competent audience to understand how ready they must be and that is why he used such a plain and down-to-earth language. Many people think his speech defect did not match up to his written skills, however, as mentioned before, a group of experts from the University College London considered his speech defect made him a great orator. Furthermore, this is not the only myth that has been broken in this essay. After this speech was corrected by a computerised marking system, Churchill got an “F of Failure”, the machine disliked his repetitions. This also happened to Golding and Hemingway.

Winston Churchill is a figure of the past that does not become out of date. There are always new studies that make us get surprised with new facts.  That is why I have decided to deal with this topic, because there is always something new to add. He is considered a figure of reference, as it has been mentioned in point 7, part of his “We shall fight on the beaches” have been included by different music groups, TV series or advertisements in their works.

This essay has given me the opportunity to study deeper those issues that surrounded Churchill, not only his political life but also his personality, that made him write in such a different way from other politicians. That is why I considered the idea of study him by means of one of his speeches, analysing his content, his purposes and the slylistic resources that he used. Because in the end, we are what we say, and in this case, what we write.