Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of the Vietnam War on America
The impact of the Vietnam War on America
Essays on the Vietnam war martin luther king speech
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The impact of the Vietnam War on America
On the fourth of April in 1967, Michael King Jr, also known as Martin Luther King Jr, spoke to the American public in the speech titled Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence. Throughout this speech, King addressed a conflict that occurred during the late 1960’s which was extremely controversial; the Vietnam War. In the speech King detailed his position on the war and particularly discussed why he was against fighting in Vietnam. King utilized many rhetorical devices in order to explain the reasons why he was against this armed conflict. The rhetorical devices that are utilized the most in the speech is specifically logos and anecdotes. Through the use of rhetorical devices, King thrived in convincing his audience into believing that entering the war was a tragic mistake. In the speech, King used many anecdotes and logos to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument in order to lead the audience into believing the reasons of why the war was negative. One of the many types of rhetorical strategies present in the speech is Logos. Logos is a type of rhetorical appeal that utilizes information to persuade the reader into believing the author’s argument. King utilized Logos in the speech as an effort to persuade the …show more content…
Anecdotes are a rhetorical strategy in which the author provides story pertaining to the topic of the reading. In the speech, anecdotes were used when King detailed stories that related to the racial conflicts and the war. King discussed the experiences he felt when he walked through the streets of numerous ghettos in the summer. When King addressed his personal experience in the ghettos, he informed the men in the ghetto that “Social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action” One of the many men in the ghetto responded back to King with “What about Vietnam? They (The men) ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its
In 1971, John Kerry stood in front of the Senate and spoke about his experiences in Vietnam as a soldier. There would be many that would agree with his position, some that would disagree and ultimately some that had no strong opinion at all. John Kerry knew that although he was speaking to the senate he was also speaking to the American people and through his intentional way of speaking he used this to his advantage. In John Kerry’s speech, strongly opposing the Vietnam War, Kerry successfully uses his persona as one who experienced the war head on, to reveal the lack of morality in Vietnam and paint the war as barbaric acts with no true purpose behind them.
The largest rhetorical appeal used by King is logos, which basically deals with logic as well as the evidence offered to support it. In an attempt to persuade the audience, King utilizes facts and examples throughout the entire letter so that the audience can easily relate and comprehend. As the letter begins, King elaborates why he is jailed, as well as the reasoning for being in Birmingham to protest. He says: “Just as the eight century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saint the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of the freedom beyond my particular hometown” (King).
Obama did a good job of sprinkling in logos into her speech. Logos is the rhetoric device of appealing to reason. This is a very important rhetorical device because it can introduce factual grounds for one’s argument. Mrs. Obama uses logos to introduce the shocking numbers of childhood obesity. One example of Mrs. Obama using logos is when she said, “Now, right now in America, one in three children is overweight or obese” (Obama 420).
On April 12th, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a peaceful protest in the city of Birmingham, Alabama that resulted in him being arrested and jailed. Later that day eight clergymen responded with the statement “A Call For Unity” in The Birmingham News requesting he ends all of his protests. A few days later, King created a response to the statement in the form of an open letter. In this letter Martin Luther King Jr. develops a well proposed argument in response to the eight clergymen who published the statement. Throughout the letter, King uses rhetorical appeal in order to give the viewer a sense of King’s credibility,his emotions, and also his logic on why he does what he does. King uses ethos by showing common interests, pathos by creating an emotional response to his viewers by justifying his unjust experiences, and logos by using logic from past events that happened in history.
The first reason is exigence, or a problem that arises that a speaker needs to address persuasively. In the case of Dr. King, this particular situation was the enduring Civil Rights Movement and the rampant racism causing it in the United States. His need to reveal his vision of equality was his way of combating this problem. The next reason pertains to the audience, and Dr. King’s audience was massive. The audience ranged from those who were directly affected by the struggle – the sanitation workers of Memphis, to those who co-labored – other African Americans, and to those who could affect change – people with the right to vote and change laws within the country . The final reason involves the constraints, or the simultaneous events and other exigencies that affect the rhetorical situation. In this situation, the constraints could be the reality of the death threats against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow activists. The death of these leaders could potentially stifle the movement. For these reasons, I believe that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is successful in his intended purpose. Although he did not personally witness the triumph of Civil Rights Movement due to his ironic assassination (ironic considering he talks about the longevity of life on the eve of this assassination) =, Dr. Martin Luther King’s use of rhetoric in his I Have a Dream and I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speeches
King supported his points throughout his essay by using logos. Logos is the use of facts, statistics and studies to show others why and how your point is correct. He researched his opinions and accumulated facts to prove his opinions and thoughts. In the l...
Martin Luther King, Jr was an exceptional orator who knew how to persuade an audience into adopting his own beliefs and changing their perspectives through the way he weaved language techniques into his speeches. To add further impact, he delivered his message in a dominant, strong, emotional way in order to show that the African-American society were not afraid to fight against the unjustly treatment they endured for so long and that they weren’t taking no for an answer in regards to civil rights.
By using the rhetoric device of anaphora, both Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) and President John F. Kennedy (JFK) persuaded their audiences, and left them with lasting ideas. For example, MLK Jr. establishes in his speech that, "Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation... Now is the time to lift our nation... Now is the time to make justice a reality”. He uses the phrase “now is the time” as a rhetoric device to capture his audience. He is stating that the African Americans have waited long enough for their well-deserved freedom. He uses anaphora to persuade his audience when he repeats, “…some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh out of the narrow jail cells…”
After being jailed in the Birmingham city jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister who preached nonviolence, wrote this response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama. This letter was not only composed under somewhat constricting circumstances but was written in a way that can be analyzed to be considered as a classic argument. Not only does it contain the five elements needed in a rhetorical situation, but the letter includes the six parts of an argument, the five types of claims, and even the three types of proofs. Dr. King’s letter fully satisfies all requirements needed in order to be considered a classic argument.
These devices can be applied more effectively by verbal communication. Firstly, face-to-face communication allows speaker to show his persistence, determination, establishing trust and constitute a strong emotional bond on audiences. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is an accurate masterpiece of rhetorical devices. In his speech, he quotes from the Constitution of the United States and builds up his own credibility, refers to the religious and patriotic documents by drawing attention on emotional values of many people. Additionally, he makes some rhythmic repetitions, which enriches the power of his words such as “Let freedom ring from”, “One hundred years later” and “Now is the time”. These strong traditions of verbal communication support political leaders in public speaking.“Anyone who has heard the speeches of Martin Luther King, such as are still available in recorded form will recognize the rhetorical features that lay behind such powerful words.” (Furniss, 2004, P. 88) Speakers who use paralinguistic features and rhetorical devices appropriately can give the message without isolating at the time of oral argument, while understanding the reactions of audiences and leading the
In former Civil Rights Activist, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “Beyond Vietnam-- A Time to Break Silence”, he asserts that the war in Vietnam is utterly immoral and has a far negative implication, not only for Vietnam but for the United States as well. In this speech, King uses three main rhetorical devices, in order to strengthen his position on this war. The three main rhetorical devices: ethos, pathos, and logos, are universally considered as the three necessary tools of persuasion in literature.
King’s second tool was pathos. He used this tool to show concern and appeal to the emotions of the audience by pointing out the number of deaths the war was causing. Dr. King stated, “It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population” (King). He mentioned here that Americans were sending the men in their lives to fight and die in the war. He also made sure that he emphasizes the amount of lives lost without stating the actual number by using the words “extraordinarily high proportions” (King). He showed more emotion by doing this. Dr. King mentioned that the government was taking the poor men from before and sending them far away from home to fight and die for liberties of another nation that they have not yet received. He stated, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem” (King). Dr. King said that he could not sit back and watch as they burned villages and killed innocent citizens and not speak out by stating, “And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor” (King). Dr. King would not be silent about the
King uses in his speech is Pathos, which is the appeal to someone 's emotions or beliefs. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. presented a strong feeling towards African-American people about how they were treated as equal individuals “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (King par. 3). Another example of pathos that Dr. King used was when he uses vocabulary and phrases, such as “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” (King par. 12). He uses the appeal of emotion, especially the word of choice and diction to let his audience’s know what he would like to see in the
On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most notable speeches in American history, at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King started off his famous “I Have a Dream” speech by stating the impact it would have on America’s civil rights movement: “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation” (King 1). With knowledge of rhetoric and persuasion, King had a substantial impact on the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos appeals enable King to persuade the audience to achieve equality.
In Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, King makes use of an innumerable amount of rhetorical devices that augment the overall understanding and flow of the speech. King makes the audience feel an immense amount of emotion due to the outstanding use of pathos in his speech. King also generates a vast use of rhetorical devices including allusion, anaphora, and antithesis. The way that King conducted his speech adds to the understanding and gives the effect that he wants to rise above the injustices of racism and segregation that so many people are subjected to on a daily basis. Throughout King’s speech, he uses the rhetorical mode, pathos, to give the audience an ambience of strong emotions such as sympathy.