Rhetorical Analysis Of Kelley's Speech

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During the early twentieth century -- and well throughout history -- , women and children were treated more as second class citizens when compared to wealthy, landowning males; the uncongenial treatment of women and children lead to crucial flaws within society: social wounds that consisted of dismal working conditions -- what Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer delivered a speech on at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905 -- and the nonchalant passing by of inequalities. Kelley, like many great social reformers, utilizes the empowering rhetorical strategies within her speech to illustrate the magnitude of the dismal working conditions for children. The rhetorical …show more content…

An instance of this trend is the amount of people receiving proper medical care and the rate of mortality within in country -- in countries such as Zimbabwe and South Africa. Kelley exercises the same method -- also known as logos -- mentioned prior in the beginning of her speech to assist her audience in realizing that there is a social wound prevalent within their society and how infected the wound is, “We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread. The vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania, to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states” (Lines 1-7). Likewise to displaying problems in distribution of medical care in underdeveloped countries, Kelley utilizes numbers in order to demonstrate a social wound within society -- the magnitude of dismal working conditions for children. Kelley couples the current use of logos with the repetition of “years” in order to invoke a feeling of empathy from her audience. The utilization of repetition with the demonstration of logos amplifies the response from the audience, further drawing them closer to Kelley’s argument and to the social wound they’ve help inflict on society -- in which instills a sense of obligation to mend the social

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