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Rhetorical Analysis Of I Have A Dream Speech

Decent Essays

I have a dream: a masterpiece of rhetoric

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech was given on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial to over 250,00 people and was broadcasted on TV for the people to see. It was one of the largest marches that Washington D.C. had ever seen. His message was a call to end racism in the United States and demand for civil and economic rights. Dr King's speech was highly successful because he used many different modes of persuasion to convince the American people to agree with his position on certain issues. The three main certain modes of persuasion that he used in his speech are logos, pathos, and ethos. The aim of Logos is to appeal to an audience by convincing them with reason or logic. Pathos aims at encompassing the emotional response from the audience and reduce the audiences ability to judge. Ethos deals with the character of the speaker, and also convinces the observers that the speaker and author is reliable. Martin Luther King Jr. was not his given birth name, he was born as Michael King Jr. He was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta Georgia. Growing up, King's father was a member of a baptist church, and stepped in to become the pastor of that church. He adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in remembrance of Martin Luther, a German Protestant that was an influential yet controversial figure in history. Not too long after, Michael Jr. would follow in his fathers footsteps and adopt the name himself. In 1960, Dr. King

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