Use of Rhetorical Devices in a Women’s Rights Speech

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“We have met to uplift women’s fallen divinity upon an even pedestal with man’s. We now demand our right to vote.” With this forceful introduction, Elizabeth Cady Stanton pulls the injustice against women to light and demands it to be felt. Her speech is a call to change, a shout for justice in a sea of corruption. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech, delivered at the First Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, appeals to emotion, ethics, and logic to affirm the necessity of equality for women.
Stanton uses various emotional techniques to grab the attention of the audience and create personal connections, through specific diction, metaphors, and alliteration. Stanton’s vocabulary (including the phrases “But to have drunkards, idiots… and silly boys fully recognized” and “the battlements of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of sin and death”) evokes compelling mental images that turn the audience against men and their injustices. Her powerful phrasing pinpoints the exact places where the audience is weakest, the issue of incompetent men, their right to vote, and the absence of true righteousness in America. Stanton’s vernacular isn’t the only device used to create an emotional response, however. Her use of metaphor is just as strong. She describes America’s situation as follows: “thorns of bigotry and prejudice… banners will beat the dark storm clouds of oppression.” This comparison between prejudice and thorns, words that both hold a negative connotation, hits hard in the audience’s mind. These metaphors connect the entrapment women are exposed to everyday to a physical version of thorns. This gives a clear mental picture of the hurt and pain caused by unequal rights and dramatizes the issues at hand, bringing emphasis ...

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...ses like “the state, the church, and the home” and “mind, body, or estate.” The final appeal to a more ethical approach is the use of repetition. Throughout Stanton’ speech, she reminds the audience “the right is ours” while weaving the phrase into numerous paragraphs, showing they (women) deserve suffrage, that inequality is wrong, and that justice will triumph.
Through the intelligent use of various concrete appeals, Elizabeth Cady Stanton brings to light the injustices against women and provokes the audience to take action and form a better nation. Her words pull the heartstrings of the audience while adding emphasis to the wrongdoings happening every day. She calls for gender equality, not just in social life, but in civic and political as well. Among a plethora of inequality, her words ring true. “The right is ours,” she asserts. “The right is ours.”

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