Summary Of Rhetorical Devices In President Clinton's Address

In response to his alleged affair with Ms. Monica Lewinsky, who at the time was an intern at the White House, President Clinton took to a national broadcast to clear his name. In his testimony, Clinton begins with a formal and slightly apologetic tone, and then subtly shifts the blame from his actions to the nosiness of the American public, victimizing himself. There were four different tone shifts in this particular speech, and he uses this to his advantage in turning the spotlight away from his private life, and to national issues. In his address, President Clinton uses a wide variety of rhetorical devices to convince his audience, the American people, that his stance on the matter is the most valid, and to reestablish his credibility,

After claiming that he never asked anyone “to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or take any other unlawful action”, his tone shifts back from defensive to guilty and shameful. Clinton relies, in the second half of his speech, on the repetition of the word ‘private’, to redirect the guilt from himself to the nosey American people. He uses this as a shame tactic, in attempt to reinforce that he is not solely to blame for his actions. He uses alliteration in saying that “it is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into personal lives”, which illustrates his irritability with having his personal life in the spotlight. He later goes on to say that, “I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It’s nobody’s business but ours”, which suggests, by his use of the word “my”, that President Clinton doesn’t believe that he is solely to blame for what occurred. He later goes on to say that, “I take my responsibility for my part in all of this”, which suggests, by his use of the word “my”, that President Clinton doesn’t believe that he is solely to blame for his actions, both in his private relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and for lying under

He incorporates parallelism in his statement that “we have important work to do – real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face”, through the consistent use and placement of the word ‘real’. He uses this to express the real danger that our country is in, and that we need not to be focusing our attention on his act of adultery, but rather to the national security. He also uses irony in this statement, as the issues with the President and how trustworthy he is become present before issues like foreign affairs surface, and with the now-present, untrusting nature of the American populace, Clinton will have a hard time regaining their trust to handle such large scale issues. President Clinton then incorporates his last tone shift, where he shifts from being annoyed to wanting everyone who is listening to him to be dismissive of the affair and to forget what happened. Here, he asserts that he believes it would be best if everyone involved would act as if it never took place. He does not use this solely for the purpose of national security reasons, but primarily to clear his name, in hopes that if he is no longer gossiped about, the issue will be