Rhetorical Analysis Of President Kennedy's Inaugural Address

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In President Barack Obama’s eulogy at the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy, he uses rhetorical strategies such as listing, using personal anecdotes of the late Senator, and applying multiple variations of cause and effect statements to provide a praising and impactful eulogy. At the beginning of Obama’s speech, he listed the various names Senator Ted Kennedy was known by or personally called. He references Kennedy's professional legacy and titles such as “a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate.” Not only does he credit Kennedy’s professional titles, he goes on to use more personal titles like “The Grand Fromage” and “The Big Cheese” which his nephews used to call him to pull a more youthful and light-hearted tone to his speech. …show more content…

Following the list of titles, Obama goes on to further retell personal anecdotes from Kennedy’s past. He starts by mentioning childhood memories of Kennedy with his brothers and how “they tossed him off a boat because he didn’t know what a jib was,” but Kennedy then “got back in and learned to sail.” Then he mentions the adversities that Kennedy went through to shape who the person he became, including how “[h]e lost two siblings by the age of sixteen,” “[h]e saw two more take violently from the country that loved them,” “[h]e narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle public way possible.” All of these anecdotes reveal more of the person Ted Kennedy was and continues to shine a positive light on the human being he was in his lifetime. The first story exemplifies Kennedy’s perseverance and his way of turning a sour situation into a sweet one. It fosters sympathy for a man who the audience might not know, but will slowly learn to have the great care and perspective of the man Obama speaks

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