Rhetorical Analysis Of Ain T I A Woman

Sojourner Truth’s orginal name was Isabella Baumfree. She lived from 1797 to November 26, 1883, during the time in America where slavery was abolished. As an African-American woman, abolition and women’s rights, were two very important causes to her. She is best remembered for her speech best-known for her speech delivered in 1851 at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio regarding racial inequalities that gained the title “Ain’t I a Woman?” as that was a phrase that she repeated often throughout the oration. Sojourner was born a slave but managed to escape with her newborn baby girl in 1826. She committed much of her life to the anti-slavery cause and helped give African-Americans the opportunity to join the Union Army. Although Truth’s

claim to fame was her abolitionist point of view, she supported a broad variety of reform causes, such as suffrage, prison reform, and property rights. (A&E Networks Television, 1)
In May 1851, Truth gave a powerful extemporaneous speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron that became be known as "Ain't I a Woman?" The first version of the speech was taken to print soon after its delivery by Marius Robinson, editor of The Anti-Slavery Bugle, an Ohio Newspaper. Robinson had attended the convention and recorded Truth's words firsthand. His original rendition of the speech did not include the question "Ain't I a woman?" at all. Truth’s famous phrase made its first appearance in print 12 years later, as part of a version of the speech directed to a more Southern audience. It is not likely that Sojourner Truth, born in New York with a first language of Dutch, would have spoken with such a Southern twang.
Some of Truth’s ideas were deemed radical, even by fellow abolitionists. She called for political equality for all women and often criticised the abolitionist community for not seeking civil rights for black women in addition to their male counterparts. She outwardly expressed her worries that the movement for civil rights would dwindle after achieving victories for black men, resulting in both white and black women lacking suffrage and other key political rights.
Throughout her speech, Truth uses a multitude of rhetorical strategies such as anaphora, comparison, allusion, rhetorical question, pathos, amplification, logic, diction, tone changes, definition, and understatement. The tone throughout the speech begins provocatively with sarcasm and complaints. It then transitions into a more painful and somber tone, and finally ends assertive and inspiring. This speech was not ad lib. Sojourner Truth had prepared this already and came up with the strategies she has used in the speech.
Truth lived from seventeen ninety-seven until eighteen eighty-three. She gave this speech in particular on May twenty-ninth eighteen fifty-one. The background written in the text about her life exhibits ethos. By discovering a little bit about her, the audience will likely be more effective in understanding and ingesting her message.
She does not mess around getting straight to the point and establishes herself as self-sufficient in the first paragraph.
Truth then reaches out and mentions a man in the audience who treats apparently treats women like princesses helping them into carriages, or over mud-puddles. She then goes on to bring up that this man was most definitely talking about white women. This comparison uses irony of situation.
After her ironic contrast between how black and white women are treated and viewed by men, she brings up her first usage of the title. Her rhetorical question makes the listener think and reflect on why white and black females are not treated the same because, in fact, they are all women.
She then continues on a string of rhetorical questions and uses anaphora as she repeats phrases and pulls in the listeners, gaining their attention and making them think.

This technique is effective.

Dispersed throughout the questions, Sojourner brings up her thirteen children that she has given birth to. They were all then sold away from her and into slavery. She uses this heartbreaking story as pathos to make the listeners feel bad for her.

Truth uses a hypophora to define what it is to be a woman. Her question answered by an audience member was deliberate. She knew the word all along, but wanted to involve the audience even more and get the audience to think internally about what she said.

Write a paragraph about all the comparisons she makes.

She also alludes to the Bible and other sources. This is where I will write something about that.

Pathos is a writing technique that she uses in many ways, many of which are encompassed in her other rhetorical devices.

Aplification is used to help ger her point across. This is where that will be included.

Speak to each piece of logic that she uses ot make even women able to understand her

work.
Because the speech was planned, Truth had the opportunity to plan exactly what she was gonna say and chose her words very carefully.
Give more detail to the tone changes described in previous paragraph.
Explain how her definiton of certain terms and statements plays into her irony of situation and sarcasm throughout.
Sojourner Truth’s complaints can be irritating to listeners which may make them think more and stuff.
Sojourner Truth wholeheartedly represented the hardworking and dedicated attitudes of many feminitsts during her time period.

Born into slavery in the state of New York, she grew up speaking Dutch. She escaped from her slaveowners in 1827, continuing her life with a son and daughter, working as a servant for the Van Wagener family. The supportine Dutch-American family helped her win a legal battle for her son's freedom; she became the first black woman to have success against a white man in a US court. She took their last name. Adventuring out by herself, she helped a preacher in converting sex workers to Christianity and lived in a progressive communal home. She took thre name "Sojourner Truth" due to the mysterious voices and visions she began to sense. To distribute the ‘truth’ of these teachings that she experienced through her visions, she ‘sojourned’ alone, lecturing, singing gospel songs, and preaching abolitionism through a multitude of states over the course of thirty years. Truth advocated women's voting rights with the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a prominent figure in the Seneca Falls Convention. She told the story of her life in autobiographical form to Olive Gilbert, who transcribed and edited it into Narrative of Sojourner Truth. (1850) She spoke Dutch-accented English, but never learned to read or write. Sojourner Truth is rumored to have shown her breast to a crowd at a women's rights convention when she was accused of secretly being a man. Her

response to a man who said that women were the weaker sex has become legendary, as a part of her infamous speech:
I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into bars, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -- when I could get it -- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
This satirical speaker has been compared to great blues singers. Additionally, Harriet Beecher Stowe and many others found inspiration in Sojourner Truth, a woman who was was far ahead of her time, and who could declare, "Lord, Lord, I can love even de white folk!"
Above I will resummarize Truth as a whole and next I will talk about her death and legacy.
Sojourner Truth died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, on November 26, 1883. She is buried alongside her family at Battle Creek's Oak Hill Cemetery.
Truth is remembered as one of the foremost leaders of the abolition movement and an early advocate of women's rights. Abolition was one of the few causes that Truth was able to see realized in her lifetime. The 19th Amendment to the constitution, which enabled women to vote, was not ratified until 1920, nearly four decades after Sojourner Truth's death.