Hi "Let's welcome the negative rebuttal speech." It has to be "Let's welcome the negative rebuttal speaker," right? You can say, for example, "Let's welcome the band," but you can't say, "Let's welcome the band's song." I understand that, as a transitive verb, "welcome" can also mean "gladly accept", and "Let's (gladly accept) the speech" sounds okay. But this meaning of "welcome" is highly subjective, right? It indicates how you feel about something e.g. "I welcome change." So if you say, "Let's welcome...," you're necessarily using "welcome" to mean "greet" and thus you can't say "Let's welcome the speech". I'm 99% sure about this, but sometimes things that I thought were wrong turning out to be acceptable and vice versa.
Top answer
Hi, Yes, as an introduction it sounds odd. You could say 'The negative rebuttal speech was welcomed by the listeners' after it was delivered, but that's a different context. Is 'negative rebuttal' the correct term, or is it just 'rebuttal'?
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