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Rhetorical Analysis: The Hike In Steel Prices By John F. Kennedy

710 Words3 Pages

President John F. Kennedy gave a commentary during a news conference on April 11, 1962 in which he argues that the hike in steel prices is unjustifiable and extremely wrong for the lives of the American people. Kennedy establishes his claims that raising the price of steel harms the lives of every American citizen through first establishing the context of the issue and then explaining all of the reasons that this rise in steel prices is harmful through his use of anaphora, appeal to logic, and tone of contempt towards the steel companies. Kennedy wishes to rebuke the steel companies who are raising these prices and anger Americans against them in order that they can stop raising their prices. His audience is the angered people who were upset …show more content…

He also quotes the Acting Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and says, "Employment costs per unit of steel output in 1961 were essentially the same as they were in 1958 (58)". He then references the Wall Street Journal when he reports that earnings of the steel industry were "among the highest in history (74)". Through all of these uses of research into this issue, he appears to his audience to be well-informed and a reliable source on this issue. He makes himself an expert on this issue, an expert who sympathizes with the American people suffering from these price increases, as he makes clear by his use of evidence from sources proving just how bad the effects of the price increases are for Americans. Furthermore, throughout the course of his argument he holds a contemptful tone towards the steel companies that are raising these prices. He vividly illustrates just how upset he is at the actions of these companies in the words that he uses to describe them. When talking about the increasing steel prices, he calls the increases "wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible

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