Hello readers, A week has already past. That means a new post on my blog. So what I want to talk about in my post of today is about Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The way I came up with this idea is pretty funny. My friend Jack told me on WhatsApp that I had to look up on YouTube for ‘top 10 famous speeches’ (here is the link: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VegIvb1e7s ). After I watched the video, I asked him why he had told me to watch it. He told me that he was then able to ask me, if Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address should have been at the number one spot. I told him that I agreed with the top ten list and that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address should be at the top spot of the top ten famous speeches. So he asked why I …show more content…
In 1863 there was a battle, the battle of Gettysburg. It was a civil war that lasted for three days and more than 50,000 people died. So Abraham Lincoln’s speech was actually to honor the fallen soldiers and to remind the people that they were fighting for …show more content…
I will also divide the rhetorical devices in three parts: ethos, pathos and logos. We will first look at ethos. Ethos is actually another word for credibility. It shows the speakers good character, Abraham Lincoln established that by using formal vocabulary. Abraham Lincoln for example used words ‘devotion’, ‘honored’, ‘hallow’ and ‘nobly’ to praise the soldiers. He also used an allusion in his speech. ‘All men are created equal’ is an allusion that he used from the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence was very important for his audience, because it symbolized freedom and equality. Those were things they were fighting for. The Second thing that I will look at is logos. Logos means persuading people by the use of logic. He used antitheses by saying: ‘we have come to dedicate a portion of this field’ and ‘but larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground’. These two quotes emphasize how noble these soldiers’ actions were.’ But in a large sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground’ is also parallelism. The use of ‘we cannot’ in this sentence is used three times after each other. That makes the speech more powerful and