A rhetorician is someone who knows how to appeal to every audience by using their appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. This person understands that making a speech involves more than coming up onto a podium and talking. Martin Luther King Jr. was a prime example of being knowledgeable with his use of ethos, pathos, and logos. Dr. King used ethos to appeal to ethics, pathos as a way to sway the audience’s emotions, and logos as an appeal to logic (Examples). Dr. King’s purpose of speaking was to receive racial equality for all. At the time, African-Americans were treated dramatically different than other races. The civil rights movement was intended to change this. Dr. King’s speech was intended for the masses to hear, he wanted to help inform …show more content…
King executes the use of pathos throughout his speech. Dr. King’s purpose of using pathos was to affect the audience’s emotions and work their emotions to sympathize with the African-Americans. Dr. King worked up the emotions of both black and white people that day. “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” (Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech, paragraph 16). Dr. King uses the tactic of referring to the American dream to appeal to the emotions of the audience as a whole. Implying that we all have freedom and rights ignites an emotional response everyone can relate to. Dr. King sparks an emotional response with that passage, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech, paragraph 20). Using this statement helps the audience to understand he is a parent and wants what is best for his children, similar to all the other parents in the audience. He is connecting to the audience on a deeper level, he is showing the audience a personal side and helping to connect on a more personal