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Language In Persuasive Language

Decent Essays

Oxford dictionary (2017) defines persuasion as ‘the action or process of persuading someone or of being persuaded to do or believe something’. When related to communication, persuasion is referred as ‘any message that is intended to shape, reinforce, or change the responses of another or others’ (Miller, 1980). It is used to convince others to ‘agree with our facts, share our values, accept our argument and conclusions, and adopt our way of thinking’ (Saylor Academy, 2017). A key element in persuasion is language. The effective use of language is referred as rhetoric. According to google dictionary (2017), rhetoric is deepened through ‘the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques’. This technique of persuasion is commonly used by politicians, marketing agent, advertisers, social activists etc. to reach the desired efforts (Wawasan, 2015).

‘Persuasion …show more content…

A typical example is the work of Martin Luther King Jr with his famous speech ‘I have a dream’ (1963) in which he incited for the end of racism in the US. From the use of repetition of ‘I have a dream’ to create emphasis on his vision on racism to the use of metaphor ‘happiness is a sunny day, loneliness is a locked door, cosiness is a cat on your lap’ to show the contrast between racism and freedom, he has been able to deliver a very prophetic speech ‘now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children’. Martin Luther King words act as the trigger component in the progessive change of the civil rights of the Black Americans as he was ‘the right man delivered the right words to the right people in the right place at the right time’ (Antony Trendl, 2017). King’s grandiloquent speech remains in history and has influenced many activists such as Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) and Rosa Parks (1913-2005) to name

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