President Harry S. Truman's State Of The Union Address Of 1948

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In President Harry S. Truman 's State of the Union address of 1948, he calls the American people to action in order to improve the issues of their time. President Truman builds his argument by using a collective tone and syntax to build a sense of unification as well as using different organizational methods in order to appeal to the American public 's call to action. Throughout his speech, President Truman uses grandiose collective diction and repetitive syntax in order to further unify the nation and to ingrain the ideals of nationalism to further strengthen his argument. Truman 's unrelenting use of "us", "our", and "we" sets up a communal and collective tone throughout the passage. By doing this, Truman is appealing to people 's calls to action and implicitly reminding them that this country is theirs and they are responsible for it. This helps him strengthen his argument that the nation 's collective welfare is based on the ideals of Democracy by unifying them as a nation by his use of parallel syntax in paragraph 2. Through his repetition of the phrases "not...but," in paragraph two, he was able to make a point in a more profound and appealing way to the audience that incited the American people’s call to …show more content…

Throughout his speech, President Harry S. Truman is able to unify the nation and set the gears of change into motion by intertwining aspects of persuasive writing into his address the to people. His use of collective pronouns and parallel structure allowed him to unify the nation and set them on toward a common goal for the betterment of the country. Furthermore, after his methods of unifying the nation, he used the notions of the past and future, negative and positive organizational structures, and going from generic to specific ideas in order to appeal to the audience’s call to action. Through all of these, President Truman was able to deliver a calculated speech in order to persuade the audience to continue to invest in their country’s political