John F Kennedy Inaugural Address Rhetorical Analysis

On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy took the oath of office to become the nation’s 35th President. More than twenty thousand people huddled in 20-degree temperatures on the east front of the Capitol to witness this legendary event. Turmoil due to the Cold War intensified the vitality of Kennedy’s Inaugural Address to not only be vital to his fellow Americans, but to the entire world as well. Kennedy knew how crucial and decisive this speech would be, so he used this opportunity to thoroughly convey his hope for peace and the urgency to build a stronger military. To achieve this, John F. Kennedy aptly uses diction, sentence structure, and tone; thus, he generates his aim to inspire people with a message that calls for both peace and strength.

To begin with, Kennedy calls for peace by using unifying diction. He exclaims, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country” to inspire Americans to become one strong unit. By using the word ‘my’, Kennedy, the newly elected President of the United States, groups himself with the rest of the nation to appeal to the audience’s sense of unity. He as well creates a bandwagon effect, for he uses peer pressure to motivate people to fulfill their civic duty. He also creates equivocation by generating a mindset where people do what they can for their country; therefore, he amplifies patriotism in the audience. Kennedy then takes his message to a global scale when he proclaims, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man” in order to evoke a sense of unity in the whole world. By using unifying diction, Kennedy appeals to the audience’s pathos to achieve his primary goal, which is to inspire people with his hope for