Rhetoric In Ronald Reagan's Inaugural Address

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Throughout the Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan (Rowland 85-88), his piece of rhetoric in the form of speech contained a strong emotional emphasis to gain the trust of the audience and to overcome the economic and governmental issues confronted the United States at that time. Reagan, starts by tapping into the nine different sub-strategies that produces an emotional response within the audience. First, he started by using the strategy of appeals to basic needs where he talked about how the US was confronted by the economic affliction, which led to the longest inflation of the US history “It distorts our economic decision, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives …show more content…

For instance, he told Americans that they could over economic depression of that time, he said: “The economic ills we suffer that come upon us over several decades will in days, month or weeks” “They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now…., to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.” Finally, the last two remaining strategies he uses are elemental and societal symbols. In short, using the strategy of elemental symbol, he mentioned the working Americans as the backbone of this nation “They are, in short, ‘We the People’, this breed called American.” To make Americans feel proud no matter who they are. Ronald Reagan concluded his speech symbolically affirming that Americans can create a change “After all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.” In brief, pathos is known to be the most effective in producing a strong emotional response. Therefore, in the case of rhetoric both graphic description and abstract language fulfil each other, and by triggering the feeling of the audience through the mention of pathos, it indeed creates an emotional response, however, this strategy is dangerous and known to have been utilized by Adolf Hitler to persuade the German people about the