Audre Lorde Rhetorical Devices

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Rebecca Cosby Lori Perrine IB English Honors 10 22 February 2023 Anger weighs more than Nuclear Bomb In Audre Lorde's speech “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”,talks about women reacting to racism in a National Women's Studies Association Conference in Storrs, Connecticut. How Black anger doesn’t power the world or change. She uses rhetorical strategies and special diction to get her point across effectively. The devices she uses brings weight to what she is expressing and leaves a bigger impact. The successfulness of the speech benefits the strategies and the influence of the setting. Lorde uses the Rhetorical device pathos to give weight to what her overall point is. She does this best in this quote “I have lived with that anger,ignoring,feeding …show more content…

Lorde is successful in this quote because it shows progress over life in one sentence. Another quote that shows pathos well is “Women responding to racism means women responding to anger.” She uses reputation in this and helps drive the point across.Its successful because it brings simplicity to the meaning of anger. The last quote that helps pathos in this speech is “The anger between women will not kill us if we articulate them with precision.” This quote means that the anger women have will not hurt us if we direct it to the right target. It's successful because it relates but also has thought into it. She uses the rhetorical drive ethos to make the speech more personality and Cosby 2 personal. One quote she does well is “I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university”. This quote shows realism. It’s successful in this way also. It brings the overall speech to life. Another quote that brings ethos out in this speech is “I speak here as a woman of color who is not bent upon destruction, but upon survival.” It gives a sense of relatability to women of color. This speech uses Ethos all the time with Racism, …show more content…

Another quote that shows this well is “What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint in another woman's face?” She asks the audience why they are so interested in seeing women hate each other. This brings the audience out of the ‘story’ and starts to connect back to real life. It is also successful because of this. One last quote to show this is “What women’s term of oppressions have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous,away from the cold wind of self-scrutiny?” This quote makes you think about how you treat other women and how other women treat you. And how this affects the future and how it reflects the past.This concept is success by help or making you connect what you're reading to real-life. In sum,the successfulness of the speech benefits the strategies and the influence of the setting.Lorde uses the Rhetorical device pathos to give weight to what her overall point is. She uses the rhetorical drive ethos to make the speech more personality and personal.Lorde uses the diction in her speech a lot. She uses the technique of rhetorical questions to bring reality into