More handpicked essays just for you.
Rhetorical devices used in speeches
Essays examples containing rhetorical devices
The effectiveness of rhetorical devices
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the year of 1990 Mary Ewald, a concerned mother, wrote a letter to Iraqi president pleading for the return and release of her son Thomas. Throughout her letter Mary Ewald uses several rhetorical devices. Ewald makes appeals to ethos by stating she and her husbands credentials, she evokes emotion by discussing religion and her son, and she provides logical evidence with detail. Even though the mother is emotional she is able to write with intelligent diction and doesn't reveal a pleading tone until the
In the letter written by Benjamin Banneker to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in 1791 uses many rhetorical strategies like metaphor and an allusion to the bible from the Declaration of Independence to convey his thoughts that slavery is the root against ideas that all men are created equal. Banneker uses a respectful tone throughout his letter to get to his point in a educated manner. Banneker uses human aid metaphorically when he says “...which every human aid appeared unavailable,...” . He compares help to human aid when he says that human aid is not available as saying help is not found in any surroundings. He purposely gives us that metaphor so we as a reader will understand what was happening in the 18th century with the issue
While convincing his wife to travel to the United States, John Downe uses rhetorical strategies such as narration, pathos, and exemplification to help his cause. In the beginning, narration was used as John explains a day in the United States, with a local farmer. As the day is explained, the farmer mentions to John that he, "...was welcome to come to his house at any time..." Telling his wife about his encounter with the farmer, he claims that people are much more generous and approachable in the U.S. There is a much more trustworthy crowd where the people "...do not think of locking the doors..." rather than in England where his wife and family are.
Puritan’s harsh beliefs represented the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in the newly colonized America. Their community ruled with an iron fist: unforgiving, pitiless, stern. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses his disagreement with puritan priorities by revealing the hypocrisy widely practiced throughout their community. Hawthorne’s utilization of dim diction aids in the establishment of his scornful tone, while inclusion of symbols and intricate juxtaposition all serve to accentuate the Puritan’s duplicity. All these factors combine to develop a critical tone which rebukes puritan society.
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? (79)”, this quote is from the book, Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement in 1954. He had a great impact on race relations in the U.S. and he made a great impact on many lives. He died in 1968. Dr. King wrote 2 famous works, “Dream” and “Birmingham” and each had a different audience and purpose. Both works utilizes the persuasive techniques of pathos in “Dream” and logos in “Birmingham.”
A twelve year old boy a world away from his parents once wrote in a letter to his parents: “And I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death.” This child was Richard Frethorne, and in “Letter to Father and Mother,” he communicates his desperation caused by the new world’s merciless environment to his parents to persuade them to send food and pay off his accumulated debts from the journey. He accomplishes this with deliberate word choice and allusions to the bible to appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos. Frethorne uses diction, imagery, and facts to create a letter to his parents which aims to garner sympathy for his state of life and to persuade them to send food and pay off his debts.
Abigail Adams is writing a letter to her son, John Quincy Adams. In this letter Adams is informing her son that he should use his wisdom and knowledge to help him throughout his trip abroad he is taking with his father, John Adams. Also known as the second president of the United States. Adams uses comparisons and pathos to encourage and advise her son while he is traveling abroad with his father. Adams establishes authority by using pathos throughout her letter.
In the 1830s, John Downe wrote a letter to his wife in hopes of convincing her to join him in the United States. In the letter he uses rhetorical strategies such as tone, diction and pathos to convey the greatness that was the United States. Downe immediately uses diction in the semantic field of pleasantry to describe his current living situation. He explains how he was instantly "welcome[d]" by his master.
The newly established land of America was attempting to break away from the mother country, England, to become the independent land that we know as the United States. The letter by Abigail Adam was written to her beloved son whom was traveling abroad with his father. Throughout the letter, Adams uses inspiring diction, allusions to historical figures, and well timed metaphors to encourage her son to be resilient and not shy away from any challenges that may face him. In the letter, Adams compares her son to other great leaders using allusions and metaphors.
The Prison Door In this Chapter from The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne introduces the setting of the book in Boston. He uses a gloomy and depressed tone in the beginning of the chapter. He is able to convey this tone using imagery while describing the citizens, the prison, and the cemetery. However, as he continues to discuss the rose-bush, he uses parallelism to shift the tone to be brighter and joyful. To create a gloomy and depressed tone, Hawthorne uses imagery.
Judy Brady’s “I Want A Wife” is a revolutionary piece that attempted to reveal the unequal roles men and women held in society. She goes through her prose by listing all the responsibilities her wife must have and the ways to make her happy. Brady’s whole article is satirizing these roles and is, in general, very sarcastic in her tone. She mocks a society that has given women an impossible standard and she starts with the deprivation of her education then continues with the role her wife should play in domestic ways, and then finishes with the expectations the sexual aspects of their relationship. I believe that Brady’s underlying message was and still is important for the development of equality in our nation.
Abagail Adams wrote a letter to her son, John Adams, who is traveling abroad with his father. Abigail Adams, who was a women back then during the Revolutionary War, didn’t have much political rights. Adams was huge in politics and so was her son, second president of the United States. Adam's uses rhetorical devices to advice her son that he is the only person that can control his future and he must know how to pull through difficulty when it's being tested. To advice her son about this, she uses many rhetorical strategies.
In John Downe’s letter to his wife about emigrating to the United States, he uses personal anecdotes to appeal to ethos and logos, subjective diction to appeal to pathos, and comparative devices to contrast the United States and England. In his letter, Downe refers to his personal experiences in America to add credibility to his attempts to convince his wife. “... they had on the table pudding, pyes, and fruit of all kind that was in season, and preserves, pickles, vegetables, meat, and everything that a person could wish…,” using a personal anecdote, he tries to sway his wife into believing that every family in America is this fortunate. It’s established that he was poor prior to moving to America, so he speaks of trips to the American markets like, “I can have 100 lbs.
Sentence Assessment Task Rhetorical Analysis: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Austen) Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Austen’s famous statement on marriage and equality continues to resonate in modern society. In comparison to today, the Victorian era significantly suppressed women’s rights (Hughes). However, Austen juxtaposes that idea by stating that it is the man, no matter how wealthy, who ‘must be in want of a wife.’
