Rhetorical Analysis Of Fdr's Pearl Harbor Address To The Nation

December 8th, 1942, a day after Pearl Harbor a very important speech was made. During the 1940s war tensions were high due to WWII. This war, as of before pearl harbor, was mainly fought in the east, relative to the United States. Since the U.S. was, for the most part, geographically removed from the war many Americans were opposed to the idea of fighting in the war. After Pearl Harbor, there was a ricochet of events that changed views. Part of this ricochet was FDR’s Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation. This speech was played to millions due to radios recently being readily available to the public and because of this, FDR’s speech would have a substantial impact on the events following Pearl Harbor. As a result of the crisis, FDR’s speech was made. Even though the speech contains some fallacies it remains effective in its use of rhetorical appeals, logos, pathos, and ethos to influence the audience. The use of the logos appeal is very important in speeches as it allows the audience to come to logical conclusions based on evidence given in the speech. However one must be careful with the use of logos as many fallacies could be made that wrongly influence the audience. One fallacy used in FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech was an assumption. For example when FDR mentions that Japan must have intentionally deceived the U.S. of continued peace because the

However, there is still another layer to FDR's speech which is delivery. With FDR’s structure and words combined he was able to deliver the speech and convey confidence. FDR’s language was to the point. According to the article Rhetoric Revisited: FDR’s “infamy” Speech, “Roosevelt prided himself on using direct language” and while this causes his language to become bland, in this speech it highlighted important words and phrases needed to get his point across to the audience