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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Dr. King's Speech

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The energy that Dr. King delivered his speech was fascinating because he successfully used anaphora in his speech. He repeatedly used the same phrases at the beginning of sentences. For example, the phases such as “One hundred years later”, “Now is the time…”, “We must…”, “We can never be satisfied…”, “Go back to… were repeated several times during his speech. This really delivered his message by making the audience interested in following his words. Even when ending his speech, he did not forget to repeat the phrase “I have a dream”. As an audience, I remembered these phrases because they clearly delivered the stories that Dr. King wanted to share. What I found inspiring by Dr. King’s speech was his repetition of important theme. To successfully deliver the message, he repeatedly mentioned the words …show more content…

His speechwriting was powerful because he used historic and literary references. For example, Dr. King mentioned “Five score years ago” from president Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address speech, and “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” from the United States Declaration of Independence (Dlugan, 2009). In addition, I am very thrilled with his use of metaphors to highlight contrasting concepts. For example, “rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice” really depicted the darkness of segregation as being a contrast to the brightness of racial justice. Other instances of metaphor are: lonely island poverty and vast ocean of material prosperity, this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent and invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. His use of language was able to sketch the unpleasant picture of segregation versus the pleasant picture of freedom and equality. These word choices were very impressive and

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