100 speeches I have chosen Richard M. Nixon’s „The Great Silent Majority“ delivered on 3 November 1969 as my one of 100 speeches. I would like to point out that I chose this speech for the following preconditions and by doing so neither judge on the Vietnam War nor on Nixon’s approach to it. However, I read through several other speeches, but it was this speech by Nixon in which the Persuasion Cycle (Goulston, 2010) was most obvious to me. In order to choose a speech on which you can trace the Persuasion Cycle and other persuasion techniques it is a precondition to have a topic towards which most listeners have a negative attitude and in case of which the listeners will be resistant to accepting the speaker’s arguments. It is thus the goal …show more content…
He most probably just would not have been able to keep it and maybe have provoked a skeptical response from his people. On page 8, #7, he also particularly addresses the young Americans who are the ones most opposed to Vietnam War. They probably have been listening and considering before, but the point where he really gets them in my opinion is page 9, #2, by arguing that a successful and peaceful end of Vietnam War is most important for the peace of the next generations. By this, he probably gets a lot of “Buy-ins” from them so that also the younger ones are willing to accept his approach and will support him in it. By giving this speech, I presume that President Nixon gained the trust of definitely not all, but a great number of the American people, and also gave them some hope. At this point, probably some of them are convinced it might be the right way to go and are willing to support this approach. Of course, whether they were glad they did afterwards and continued to support Nixon’s approach is another is a different kettle of fish. Nevertheless, in my opinion, Nixon used a number of persuasion techniques in an intelligent and successful