Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

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Florence Kelley, a former reformer for women and child labor, successfully conveys her message of immoral child labor laws across America within her speech to the National American Women’s Suffrage Association by using many different rhetorical strategies to highlight her key points and ideas. Kelley uses lengthy and concise syntax, anaphora, logical appeal, and emotional appeal in order to improve and strengthen her message conveyed in her speech. Throughout her speech, Kelley uses varieties of syntax to inform and emphasize her points to the audience. Kelley uses her knowledge of the subject of matter to her advantage by starting her speech off by using long sentences to inform and describe to her readers of the situation at hand. In the beginning of her speech, her first few paragraphs range from about two sentences to four. This improves her speech because it gives the audience background information. She then changes her long syntax to short syntax near the end of her speech. Near the end, she has many short sentences that are around six to eight words. For example, “We do not wish this,” or …show more content…

She states that while men and women are asleep and cozy in bed, little girls of young ages are working eleven hours throughout the night. This helps Kelley because it makes the audience feel guilty and bad for the poor little girls who have to work endless hours in a factory that doesn’t have the best conditions. Throughout her speech, she also uses phrases like, “…freeing the children.” By saying phrases like so, it makes it seem as though the children are locked up by work, therefore, making the audience feel rotten about “locking” these children up in factories and cotton mills. This allows the audience to feel shameful about what they have done to the children, so it persuades them to join Kelley to make more laws regarding child

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