Rhetorical Analysis Of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

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With the end of World War I, the United States President at the time Woodrow Wilson was attempting to create a set of principles in order to reach world peace. With his exceptional deliverance due to the use of persuasive rhetoric and his peaceful style, Wilson convincingly introduces his Fourteen Point plan for peace and stability within the world by addressing two main issues and creating a solution directed towards those specific problems.
Woodrow Wilson divides the Fourteen Point speech into three diverse sections, each section dedicated to different sets of issues and solutions directed to fix those specific issues. The first division within the speech is Wilson responding to the issues within diplomacy in the unstable post war world. …show more content…

The difficult problem conveyed in the first section of the speech is related to the diplomatic issues brought into light by the atrocities of World War One. The first five ideas brought up in the Fourteen Points are dedicated to expressing the past diplomacy issues and offering informed solutions that would restore the connection between the different communities involved in the first world war. Wilson uses extreme rhetoric in this section of the speech by utilizing ethos and pathos. Wilson uses logos by backing up the five points in this section with facts and evidence coming directly from the war. He operates with pathos by understanding and utilizing the emotional connection that most citizens had with the war and that also influences congress to approve the plan because they feel obligated to agree with what the citizens and the president want. Wilsons point in this section of the speech is obvious: he is presenting the underlying diplomacy issues by stating a solution to those problems instead of bringing the problems up directly. Wilson is attempting to use emotion and facts in order to gain support for his peace …show more content…

This section includes the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth points of the Fourteen Points speech. Each point devoted to the matter of territorial issues and the solutions created in order to fix the specific problems revolving around territory. Wilson delivers his points exceptionally well by utilizing different styles of rhetoric; in this division of the speech he operates with ethos and logos to express his point. He uses ethos by using his credibility as a speaker, he is the president and that causes the citizens and the congress to support and approve his plan for peace. Wilson presents his points with the use of logos as well as ethos by stating points backed up by facts, for example “VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations.” This quote represents how Wilson is utilizing logos because this declaration is backed up by the fact that Belgium was a helpful and innocent nation during the war so therefore should not be punished but assisted. Within this section of the speech Wilson is attempting to provide researched and accurate solutions created to address territorial issues brought to light by the First World