Rhetorical Analysis Of Dr. Martin Luther King's Speech

During the 1960s, Doctor Martin Luther King Junior was the leader one of the greatest movements of human history. Although it was a tough fight, he fought for African Americans, like himself, could be free from segregation and prejudice. His words are what caused many other countries to fight for equal rights for all; but how did those words inspire so many others follow? It was his use of stylistic writing. Martin Luther King’s use of various sentence structures, figurative language, and punctuation persuades the audience to thoroughly listen to what he has to say, and believe it to be right. One thing that made Dr. King’s speech persuasive was his use of different sentence structures. For example, he alludes Abraham Lincoln and the start of the speech with a complex sentence. At the start of paragraph 15, Dr. King states,” We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only.” Not only did he used a compound sentence to explain his case, Dr. King included two links to the emotional aspects of his audience. Nothing applies more to a reader than family; and that is exactly what Dr. King did. His uses of sentence structures permitted him to

King does in his writing is the use of punctuation for emphasis. The speech persuades the audience, and the reader with examples brightened by different punctuation. In paragraph 18, Dr. King uses a dash to emphasize the reference to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal.” He used this line to show that even the most precious document of American history, the Declaration of Independence, states that everyone who is born has certain rights that can’t be taken from them. These precious commodities were nonexistent for Negros in the 1960s. This emphasized allude was a turning point in the minds of many who attend Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream”