Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's Speech

I interpreted it as King trying to get the clergymen to acknowledge these issues by viewing it from the blacks perspective. When a person is told to look at a situation from a point of view that differs from their own, it opens doors to new perspective and understanding. Also, most people tend to lead by emotion, possibly providing King’s desired outcome of understanding and action.

When people hear the words “I have a dream” a specific man and a specific speech always come to mind. Martin Luther King Jr gave the I Have a Dream speech on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. This is his most famous speech, not just because of the place and timing when it was delivered but also for the content and style in which it was written. King’s speech was full of well-structured sentences, allusions, and metaphors. This speech is not only recognized for its literary style but also for its effect on history.

King incorporates a myriad of stylistic devices that shape and develop the theme of the passage in the book. Through the periodic use of rhetorical questions such as,

The role of African American has changed over the centuries. They were treated differently because of their skin color. They were treated like property for others uses however change happened. It was not a easy matter to change but one of the main reason it did change was because Martin Luther King and his speech “I have a Dream”.

He refers to the principles voiced by the nation's founders in his appeal for racial equality. This strategy was especially important in light of the fact that the government was concerned that the Civil Rights movement might discredit the United States abroad. The government was worried that if they gave African-Americans freedom, the United States would be seen as weak and have been persecuting innocent people. Hence, it was perceptive of King to imply in the speech that he is not undermining the United States, but asking the country to do justice to the principles that were asserted to be the backbone of U.S. politics and society. King states, for example, that his dream was "deeply rooted in the American dream," (King 2) and that he dreams of a day when Americans "will be able to sing with new meaning `My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing'" (King 3). King then uses the words of that song to distinguish the different areas of the country where he hoped the United States would soon "let freedom ring" (King 3) for all its citizens. King alludes to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as being a "promissory note" (King 1) to all citizens, which those at the march were claiming as their inheritance. The speech gains power from King's stressing that he was asking the United States to live up to its principles and thus to fulfill the greatness of its pronounced creed.

When I survey the landscape in black America, it does not take long for me to recognize the massive impression of a vehement struggle of a collective group of people to simply keep their head above water. The problem in the black community is that it is where every ill of this nation is felt first. It is the place in which much of the economic devastation is felt and absorbed in order to relieve some of the pressure off of this nation’s more affluent citizens.

The first literary device utilized by King in his work is historical allusion. The subject matter which he presents to achieve his rhetorical purpose of depicting the dreadful situation of blacks in

Like instruments in an orchestra being brought in one by one to a melody that fills the ears of its listeners and drives out any other thoughts, King then targets the white moderate population, the white voters. He tries to place this audience into the shoes of the black people by giving vivid descriptions of the trials they have been going through and invoke empathy in their hearts. He says: "When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your brothers and sisters at whim . . ." This statement brings up an issue every culture has had to deal with, death. Death in the American culture is one that is associated with loss and grief. King deftly imposes this loss on the shoulders of his white audience making it clear to them the pain the black people have been dealt.

King continues on by affecting the reader, on an emotional level, by going through and explaining some of the unending amount of torturous events that the black community had to endure daily. In an essay by an anonymous writer it says, “He uses a dialog that reaches into the pit of your soul and places you on an emotional rollercoaster.” When he says, “when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse,

Ethos, ethical appeal and credibility as a writer, is portrayed in every word in this letter. King’s language is more than appropriate to the audience and subject, and his

He questions the audience about society and what they have done for their community. “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity,” (King). King knows how to bring the people into the speech to involve every single person standing before him and make them feel like they are apart of the speech. He mentions what has been taken away from them which creates anger within the crowd. King’s ability to appeal to the audience through emotion affected society for decades after and changed the sense of pride the African Americans had.

At the beginning of Martin Luther King’s speech, he says, “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free, one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…” (Martin Luther King speech, 1963, para. 3). King keeps saying “one hundred years later”, to show that no matter how much time passes, African Americans will never be equal to the whites. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Logos is shown all throughout his “I have a dream” speech. He is letting the audience know that they have not been given equal opportunities, like the whites have been given.

King employs many metaphors throughout his speech to disclose emotions that can only be represented by comparing two things. The most notable example is in the beginning of his speech where he compares the lack of justice to a "check with insufficient funds." By doing this, King makes his audience acknowledge that the African American population has been deprived of its freedom. This example correlates with the rest of his speech speaking on how African Americans are treated as less than human even after being granted their freedom in 1865. To fully understand why he compares these two things the audience will need to know information regarding the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and how they were supposed to give African American slaves equal rights. This metaphor makes the audience recognize that African Americans

He argued the Negro “is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” and “lives on lonely island of poverty” (334; par. 2). He compares racial segregation and racial discrimination to shackle, vividly illustrating the miserable life of the Negros. He also compares rich America with a poor island which is the poor black world segregated by race, vividly revealing the extremely uneconomical disparities caused by racial discrimination. Logos or logical appeal is used to prove that argument is true and makes sense to the audience. The valid evidence makes the audience realize he is

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took action in the mid-1500s. He was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement. In March 1956, he led protesters on a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. It took about 3 attempts for the protesters to complete the march. They had to go through tear gas, police batons and cattle prods. Martin Luther King was a target for white people, who firebombed his family home that January. He worked with a number of civil and religious groups, to organize the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. Which was held on August 29. About 200,00 to 300,000 people attended it. That’s when he addressed his famous “I Have a Dream,” speech which expressed his hope for peace, justice and equality as