Rhetorical Devices In I Have A Dream Speech

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On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. This was a real turning point at this time due to the tension of segregation and racism in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential civil rights leaders of the 20th century, and his “I Have a Dream” speech became one of the most influential speeches due his use of rhetorical strategies in order to bridge the social divide in America. The reason for this is because of his passion to see change in the racial segregation in the United States, and his intelligence on the topic of racial discrimination. From his upbringing as a young boy in Atlanta, Georgia to his eventual assassination …show more content…

was no exception. The second strategy he practiced in his work is sentence structure. Martin Luther King Jr. exceeded when it came to having meaningful sentence structure in every public presentation of his movement. In the “I Have a Dream” speech, he exercises a tone that is matter of fact which makes it seem as if there is no other alternative than a free and equal world. In other words, his confidence is transmitted through sentence structure, which helps convince his audience in his argument to create a raceless society. His persistence and determination to change the American social order is what sways people to believe in his movement. The truncated sentence structure in the “I Have a Dream” speech allows for an audience to easily follow the message he is trying to spread. This made the speech really seem as if it was calling for a sense of change, which was the exact purpose of the speech. One could find that nearly every speech written by Martin Luther King Jr. was structured in a similar way that promoted change since that was the main idea of his campaign. The structure of a speech is very important when it comes to trying to push for change, which is why Martin Luther King Jr. was arguably one of the most influential speakers of the 20th century because he used short sentences to convey complex

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