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How Do Words Have The Power To Persuade?

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Words have the power to do many things. Words have the power to persuade, the power to inspire, and the power to provoke. As more incidents occur in society, more and more people have started to stand up for what they believe in, while doing this, the use their freedom of speech to communicate their thoughts on the subject. One of the most memorable examples of people speaking out to what they believe in would be the great Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1965 New York Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. These two men have shown how powerfully emotional, and logical words have the power to persuade, inspire, calm, and provoke others in indescribable ways. Firstly, in Martin Luther King Jr’s history changing “I Have a Dream” …show more content…

To start off, King uses logos as he addresses Adolf Hitler’s actions in the 1930’s, and how everything he “did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’”(King 278) and how King would stand next to his jewish brothers and sisters while someone was condemning them all to death. Next, King addresses how many view him as an extremist; during this, King states how many historical and biblical figures were also extremist for what they believed in; with that King was honored to be categorized with such great figures, but he also agreed greatly with the title as he also fought greatly for what he believed in. King’s use of pathos is shown when he describes how one parent were to describe to their five-year-old son as to “why do white people treat colored people so mean?” (King 273). With the many examples of King’s speeches using the rhetorical languages of ethos, pathos, and logos, King is not the only historical figure to use them in their speech; later, examples of how John F. Kennedy’s younger brother Robert has used …show more content…

Kennedy delivered a heartfelt speech in Indianapolis upon hearing of Martin Luther King Jr’s. death on April 4th, 1968. By describing his own feelings on the event of King’s death, and connecting them to his feelings during his own brother’s death shows examples of pathos. By appealing to the audience that he know how it feels to lose someone important, by speaking about his own experiences, and by constantly giving different examples of how the citizens of the United States of America can mend the country using the wise words of ancient Greek poets show how Kennedy used ethos in his speech. Despite connecting the the citizens by talking about how no equality is shown as long as everyone does not share the same idea as “a member of my family (was) killed, but he was killed by a white man,” Kennedy shares ideas that came to be from this feeling and loss of people he cared for. "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God,” as said by Aeschylus, one of Kennedy’s favorite ancient Greek poets; from this RFK believed that no matter what religion or ethnicity, that the United States should live in peace as it is not a country of hatred and

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