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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's Speech

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Throughout the world's history, many great and impactful leaders share an important connection: the ability to connect with an audience. From presidential inauguration speeches to ones for civil rights, people still look back to examine them today. Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. may have given one of the most famous speeches in the United States history, "I Have a Dream." Given on August 28th, 1963, over 250,000 people attended his speech in Washington, D.C. As a 17-minute speech in a nearly 3-hour long program, King was determined to make an impression. He begins his speech by alluding to former president Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow …show more content…

Furthermore, by using a hopeful yet confrontational tone throughout his speech, he fills the audience with hope as well as a sense of purpose. Examples of his vocabulary choices that portray this tone include "momentous," "invigorating," "seared," and "withering," creating a palpable picture of injustice and the plans he has to fix it. Additionally, he uses repetition in multiple cases. For example, he repeats the namesake of his speech multiple times. "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." He continues to state his "dreams," referring to many things. In this case, his repetition goes to show all that America had to fix, sharing with his audience the large scale of inequality. In contrast, former President Bush also exhibited exemplary language that not only spread his creed but convinced some of

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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s skillful and motivational I Have a Dream speech was a major turning point in America's history. King took a firm stand for equal rights as he confronted the issues of racism. King’s ambition was emphasizing his belief that someday all men could be brothers. The intensifying rise of the civil rights movement helped King’s speech produce a strong outcome on public opinion. The careful use of appeals in King’s most popular speech made it effective, recognizable, and life changing for the people that got to hear it that day and the generations to

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Deluged with remarkable linguistics, King’s rhetoric wholly epiphanized and unified a country that had been stricken with unrest by war and hate and thus became the epitome of the March on Washington and the summation of the Civil Rights Movement Summarized Speech The speech encapsulates the desire to remain equal among the exalted American people, those of White color. At the outset King utilizes a policy signed 100 years ago as reference to a declaration of freedom that has only been contorted to produce new boundaries on freedom;

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In his speech, Dr. King alluded to the Emancipation Proclamation to give credibility to his speech: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” By using the authority of Lincoln in his speech, he established trust and common ground with the audience. He also uses the Declaration of Independence to appeal to the audience by reinforcing “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to show that the government has not kept its promise to the American people. His use of these historical and significant documents adds to his credibility, or ethos, as a speaker to convey his message. He also gained a lot of attention from the ways he would, using pathos, capture an emotional response from the crowd by appealing to their emotions, fears, and desires.

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He says that “in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream … a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.” An essential goal of the speech is to instill hope, optimism, and faith in the listeners that the dream of freedom will be achieved, to urge with a powerful metaphor that they “not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” He describes his stirring dreams, which are themselves ominatio, foretelling a future without racism, a future of freedom for all. He builds to the climax using the phrase “Let freedom ring” a dozen times and ends with the final repetitions of the key word as he says we can “speed up that day when all of God’s children … will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last!

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He incorporated a lot of biblical allusions to insist the audience that his speech is in accordance to the Bible, as King writes that he has a dream that one day, “every valley shall be exalted,” every hill and mountain “made low,” all rough places will be “plain” and crooked places “straight” and that the “glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” (Isaiah 40:4-5). On another occasion he paraphrased one of biblical statement “weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalms 30:5 ) in his words as “It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity “cite .King’s allusions to past events help to create unite both races and inspire them to tackle this problem collectively as both colors experienced American history in some form or another. King not only references the Biblical allusions which emotionally appeal to people but also mentions legal statements like declaration of independence and Emancipation proclamation by mentioning “Five score years …” to refer to Abraham Lincoln’s address and “promissory note” to direct their attention towards their legal rights as mentioned in the constitution.

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