Rhetorical Analysis Of Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech What Libraries Mean To The Nation

Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at the 1936 District of Columbia Library Association Dinner on April 1st, and she gave her speech, “What Libraries Mean to the Nation”. Roosevelt’s speech emphasized the need of public access to books and libraries across the nation. She used her position as the President’s wife, and her passion for education and books to appeal to the primary audience at the Library Association dinner. However, she addresses her secondary audience, rural and urban America, multiple times throughout the text. Roosevelt relied heavily on pathos, which was influenced by her use of syntax and diction, to persuade the audience that books and libraries are needed for the success of the nation. Roosevelt’s speech is rhetorically effective because of the use of fallacies geared to the primary audience, and the appeals used addressed poverty and the consequences that could occur without the presence of libraries. Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech was filled with the use of fallacies that use division and bandwagon techniques to persuade the

pag.). Roosevelts ploy in this text is to persuade her audience that without the presence of libraries the nation will fail. She uses the fear of not having a successful nation in order to make her point stronger. The audience is enticed by the use of logos, because the loss of their nation would have a large effect on all the people of America. Roosevelt is able to emphasize the need of libraries in America by creating a false sense of impending