Com 212 Speech Analysis
Nicole Myers
Southern New Hampshire University
This is a brief description of the
Famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr
I had a dream
Com 212 Speech Analysis
The famous “I have a dream speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr on August 28th 1963 in Washington asking the United States government to take some kind of action for equality between black and white people in America.
Even though there are many different factors that helped to the accomplishment of the speech, Mr. Kings masterful use of different instruments that encourages president Kennedy and his team to take steps towards equality. King effectively uses many different styles of speech, such as metaphors, anaphora’s, allusion,
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As you read , you come up with metaphors. Found in almost about every line, they add to the speech and make it more compelling. Those metaphors are used to highlight the different of the two concepts. As a example, King invokes the contrast between quick sands and solid rock to distinguish racial injustice: “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.” This metaphor is used to illustrate a process other than two concepts. King uses phrases like “cash a check”, “promissory note”, “insufficient funds”, “bank of justice”, etc. As a way to distinguish between the …show more content…
King during his speech. This speech has as many as eight anaphoras. The most famous of them is “I have a dream” this is repeated in the beginning of eight consecutive sentences. Anaphora’s used by Mr. King helped impact his audience more with each successive repetition of the theme words. Besides his usage of metaphors and anaphora’s, King makes good use of another figure of speech called allusion (an indirect or passing reference) in his speech. He speaks of numerous important cultural texts, which makes his speech even more persuasive. These are some of the allusion from his speech: “Five score years ago…” refers to the famous speech by Lincoln during the Gettysburg Address that started with “For score and seven years ago…” (Lincoln’s beginning in turn speaks of the Bible.) This was touching, as King gave his speech in front of the Lincoln