Woodrow Wilson 14 Points Rhetorical Devices

World peace is the idea of a world without violence, where nations try to work with each other. In Woodrow Wilson’s “14 Points” he proposed fourteen points for peace negotiations with Congress after WWI. His speech included the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims, and freedom of the seas. These points addressed actions that Wilson himself saw were responsible for WWI. Wilson was the President of the United States at the time. This meant that most people trusted him and he was considered credible. He also builds trust by stating contrivance in his points that will later benefit the world rather than just benefit the United States. Wilson’s use of ethos, logos, pathos, and rhetorical devices

Wilson used the word “we” plenty of times in the last paragraph. An example of anaphora in this paragraph is, “We have no jealousy of German greatness... We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning… We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power” (Wilson). Wilson used this continuous use of the word “we” because it reinforces his idea of all nations being unified. Wilson used an appeasing tone while addressing this. This appeasing tone is basically just adding to the fact to just leave Germany alone along with the other countries/nations. Using anaphora adds to the effectiveness of this speech because as said before it reinforces the idea of all the nations being unified which also ties in with the ethical reasoning used by Wilson. Parallelism is also used widely in this speech as Wilson talks about many of the same things to reinforce this idea of unifying the countries. This is shown when he uses anaphora and he says the word “we” in the last paragraph to emphasize this idea. Another rhetorical device used in Wilson’s speech is eutrepismus. This is because he starts his speech by actually stating his speech, then he uses a numbered list to divide it into parts and arrange them. These add to the overall effectiveness of the speech because without these elements the speech would not flow and it would make no sense