Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Delivered one of the greatest speeches of the civil right movement on August 28th, 1963, exactly one-hundred later after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order freeing slaves in the United States. The purpose of the speech was to call for action on the oppressive racism and civil laws, to make a change. Dr. King was an impressive public speaker and knew how to persuade and awe the audience of his peers to help him and so many others with the civil right movements of the 1960s. Dr. King uses major metaphorical speech, pathos, and symbolism tied with illusion to get the point across to the audience. Metaphors are one of the main rhetorical strategies widely used thought the speech. When King Uses Metaphorical speech like in the paragraph where King says, "But we …show more content…

He did this so he can have the most effect to himself and have a historical context to have as a comparison to his speech. The ambition alone with the statement “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation”, had been backed up with the anniversary. He then references Lincoln through the passage not only in the Emancipation Proclamation aspect but even mimicked the type of language used in the Gettysburg address when Dr. King said, “five score years ago…”. He did this as to use the symble of Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves and believed that everyone should be treated the same, to help portray how he felt early on. Before Dr. King had to put in his own input on the subject people would know where Dr. King stood for and what his basic beliefs were, indirectly telling the audience where this speech is going to

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