A Rhetorical Analysis Of Hillary Clinton

On September 5, 1995, first lady Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on women’s rights at the United Nations Fourth World Conference of Women. The conference was held in Beijing China a city where there is a lack of rights for men and especially women. Clinton challenges the audience of thousands “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.” This chiasmus identifies that the phrase women’s rights is interchangeable with human rights. The purpose of the conference was to educate the audience of government officials and the public on the problems women throughout the world face. Clinton’s speech argued that women were not treated

Clinton used this rhetorical device to show the abuse and discrimination women suffer by sharing the horrifying situations in which women were forced. These situations include rape, abortion and honor killings. Clinton referenced the struggles women faced, “It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.” The example of rape as a tactic or prize of war was used to evoke the audience's sympathy. This sense of sympathy was instilled in the audience's brain to raise concern for the lack of rights women have. Clinton used pathos to emotionally connect the audience and encourage them to strive to make women’s rights

She included important facts and percentages that gave the audience a better understanding of the issue with women’s rights. Clinton presented facts about rights women lack when she said, “Women comprise more than half of the world’s population, seventy percent of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write.” Here Clinton explained women are a huge majority of the world's population, how most of them are poor and a huge number of them are uneducated. The facts Clinton provided gave a mental picture to the audience and showed how big of a problem women’s rights are in the world. Logos allowed Clinton to persuade the audience through authentic