Kent Greenfield Free Speech

Kent Greenfield, in his article “The Limits of Free Speech,” questions whether the First Amendment is correctly interpreted. Greenfield’s purpose is to share different occasions with the readers, where the amendments true purpose is in question. He adopts a passionate yet indignant tone and uses different literary techniques such story-telling, an appeal to character, an informal voice and the use of repetition and rhetorical questions in order to display to the audience the true purpose of the First Amendment. Greenfield begins his article by describing an account at the University of Oklahoma where a group of fraternity members where not punished for chanting harsh and racist comments in a viral video. He uses this story-telling strategy to appeal to the character of the reader by directly quoting the frat boys who

He states this idea five different times, and in a new way each time. The first time he says, “If we start punishing speech, advocated argue, then we will slide down the slippery slope.” And the last time he asks, “Yet is the slippery slope so slick that we cannot fathom any restrictions on the worst speech?” Greenfield actually uses this repetition in an ironic way. He is not recommending that this idea of a slippery slope for punishing speech is true, but rather, he is moving towards presenting the readers with the idea that this slippery slope is not something to be feared. The use of his repetition pours this idea into the readers’ minds over and over again, so they can’t help but think about it. Greenfield also states the “slippery slope to tyranny” in a sarcastic way, especially when he says, “That would risk a slide down the slippery slope to tyranny.” He is using the repetition and sarcastic tone so that the reader understands his stance against the fear people typically have of this slippery slope we may go down is we start punishing