Martin Luther King is a famous leader of the civil rights movement. He spoke at over 2,500 public events, wrote five books, and led multiple non-violent protest. While speaking Martin Luther King used rhetoric very well and he is now known as a rhetorical genius. He is best known for his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.
In his 1963 speech "I Have a Dream" He used multiple forms of rhetoric in this speech. In the opener to his speech he used ethos by trying to unify the people against discrimination in the quote “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” He used repetition with the words "I Have a Dream" throughout the speech. Not only did he pick the perfect words to repeat because of the pathos appeal they evoke but he said them in a tone to set them in and drive his point showing his clear understanding of rhetoric. He also uses the rule of three as he pairs three communities together then says "Free at last" three times "we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” Another clear use of Pathos in his speech is "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” A example of when he used ethos and logos was when he talks about the emancipation proclamation and how African Americans still do not have every thing they were promised and then when he talks about the declaration of independence and the quote "all American men should have equal rights".
I like how you found a real life example of how rhetoric is used by a person. I like how you talked about the different forms of rhetoric that he used throughout his speech.
ReplyDeleteanother interesting thing about his I Have a Dream speech is that it wasn't until multiple minutes in he said the famous words, I Have a Dream. the first bit was use of logos, emphasizing one man is no less than another then it took and emotional turn upon the use of the phrase I Have a Dream.
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