Rhetorical Analysis Of Jimmy Carter Speech

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Jimmy Carter was highly involved and persuasive regarding politics. Carter had opened Georgia’s government offices to women and people of color (“Jimmy Carter”). This shows that Carter was not a biased man. He believed everyone deserved the same opportunities. Carter lacked a national political base or major backing, but was able to win the 1974 presidential election through endless campaigning (“Jimmy Carter”). Carter had been part of Georgia’s House for countless years, but this shows he still wasn’t very popular. People weren’t sure if he was capable of running a country. Even after his presidency had ended, Carter worked for international peace, solving conflicts in several different countries (“Jimmy Carter”). He was so effective when …show more content…

One thing that made this speech so impactful was the use of ethos, and the ways he used to build a relationship with Americans through trust. “And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and to listen to the voices of America” (Energy and the National Goals - A Crisis of Confidence). President Carter tried to prove his credibility through his position as President. He tried appealing himself to the audience’s sense of trust. Another persuasive technique that impacted the speech would be parallelism.“Gradually, you’ve heard more and more about what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation’s hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future” (Energy and the National Goals - A Crisis of Confidence). Carter had used words of similar grammatical structure to add balance to his speech. The word ‘our’ is used multiple times throughout this one sentence. The last would be the way Carter used words to appeal to his audience's sense of emotion by using the rhetoric technique pathos.“I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams, and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you” (Energy and the National Goals - A Crisis of Confidence). Here Carter is using words to attack his audience’s sense of emotion. I believe Carter did not just have great persuasive skills, but obtained leadership skills from being someone so active in