Rhetorical Analysis Of Sojourner Truth's Speech

“Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851) is a speech written by women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth arguing that women are not being given the equal rights they deserve. Truth strives to open the audience’s eyes to the injustice women are experiencing in order to motivate people to act and help bring change about. She speaks to an audience of both men and women, using words like “children” and “honey” to establish a comforting, wise, and motherly tone. In her speech, Truth uses biblical allusions to appeal to ethos and adds a personal anecdote to appeal to pathos, effectively extending her reach to a diverse group of people and pushing them to identify with her struggles and experiences.

Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a woman” speech had many things in common with Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Truth gave her speech to help people better understand why women need rights that are equal to men. She listened to what everyone had to say about women’s rights then when it was her time to speak she used everyone’s arguments and flipped them so that she could make the audience think. Truth used ethos, pathos, and logos when she gave her speech so that she could reach out to each audience member. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King wrote to the clergy men to help persuade the clergy men that African Americans deserved to be free. King also read what the clergy men had to say first then in he used their arguments and

Through Truth’s numerous rhetorical questions used in this speech, she has made a strong impact on her audience. Each question either precedes or follows a strong truth. By questioning herself, and being able to answer each question, Truth shows her understanding of society, and the mistreatment of women. She never wanted the audience to answer her questions, because the honest answers should be obvious.All of her hardships as a slave, and she is a women. When discussing intellect, she even asks, “What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes rights?” Her rhetorical questions were a unique way of

Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. "Sojourner Truth." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 775-76. Print.

Through Truth’s numerous rhetorical questions used in this speech, she has made a strong impact on her audience. Each question either precedes or follows a strong truth. By questioning herself, and being able to answer each question, Truth shows her understanding of society, and the mistreatment of women. She never wanted the audience to answer her questions, because the honest answers should be obvious.All of her hardships as a slave, and she is a women. When discussing intellect, she even asks, “What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes rights?” Her rhetorical questions were a unique way of bringing up obvious points, and forced her listeners to fill in the answers themselves. It would have grabbed their

According to Sojourner Truth, women are just as equal to men and they should have just as many rights and privileges as any man. She draws a picture of her equality to men by professing her strength and hard-working efforts. Right away, Truth’s first goal is to establish a sense of identity and relationship with her audience. She describes events where she has faced discrimination as a black woman to trigger an emotional response. Truth juxtaposes the ideal way man says women should be treated with her own personal reality saying, “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me the best place!” By pointing out the existence of hypocrisy, Truth invites the audience to realize possible injustices in their own lives, which should encourage them to want change and seek to take action against discriminators. Sojourner plays on the emotions of her audience to their attention and their willingness for change by shedding light on her own vulnerable experiences to which they can relate. With the successful use of rhetorical devices, persuasive techniques and Biblical allusions, Truth effectively persuades the audience that there is a difference in the treatment of women, especially in comparison to women of color.

Sojourner Truth once declared, at the Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again” (“Sojourner Truth” Encyclopedia). This statement brought a wave of protest from the men in the crowd and left most women with renewed hope for receiving equal rights. Sojourner Truth was a woman’s rights activist and African American abolitionist, on top of being a freed slave. Sojourner Truth had the “worst of both worlds” being that she was African American, and also a woman. She spoke at a countless amount of conventions, largely inspired by Lucrietta Mott. Rather than using weapons, Truth

Hearing a speech from a man in Akron, Ohio she felt offended and attended the convention. She gave her speech at The Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron. She stood with courage alone, standing before the audience with her head held high and her pride. Sojourner spoke with a mighty voice full of confidence and bestowed her experiences upon the people saying what she believed in and told of God and his meaning for men. At that many people rose and sided with her, supporting her to prove their rights and freedom (Morgan, Thad 2013).

Sojourner Truth exists in American mainstream culture as a solid supporter of the developments for annulment and women’s rights. Truth 's narrative recommend that Truth contended against sex and racial mistreatment by working with a philosophy of capacity that proposed that both women and African-Americans are solid, intense, and capable. As Truth kept up a belief system of capacity keeping in mind the end goal to subvert sexual orientation and racial progressive systems, she offers a contextual investigation into the advantages of intersectional ways to deal with historical studies. Sojourner Truth exists in American mainstream culture as the carrier of a solid, working arm with a voice that intensely added to the developments for annulment and women’s rights. "Ar 'n 't I a Woman? set up her status as a solid black woman. Truth’s disability was unnoticed due to the fact that representations focused on her black, female body. Although contemporary artistic reviews has exhibited the points of confinement of accepting an

Sojourner Truth, the writer of An Account of an Experience with Discrimination and speaker of Ain’t I a Women and Speech at New York City Convention, faced many difficulties and oppressive times in her life. She went through several different owners and homes. When Truth got older, she had at least five kids, most of which were sold into slavery, with a slave named Thomas. Truth was granted freedom after the 1828 mandatory emancipation of slaves in New York and finally was emancipated. She began preaching on the streets about her religious life. Truth changed her name from Isabella Van Wagener to Sojourner Truth because she wanted to “sojourn” the land and tell God’s “truth.” She moved to Northampton, Massachusetts to become apart of the abolitionist movement. During this time, the Civil War was occurring. The North was opposed to slavery and the South was for slavery. Truth addressed women’s rights repeatedly. She pointed out that the meetings about women’s suffrage were racially segregated. Truth gave many public speeches throughout Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. Truth used an approach when giving speeches called rhetorical strategy. She was extremely opinionated and pointed out a good argument about slaves creating the country and receiving no credit for it. She also made a good point when talking about women’s rights: “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world

This passage stated by Sojourner Truth is very powerful in itself. The use of the metaphor and how she uses her voice presents a strong and confident argument. This passage got my attention because of how Truth interacts with her audience in order to keep her speech interactive and interesting. Then, Truth connects the audiences’ words to her own explanation that she is exhibiting. The metaphor also fascinated me quite a bit. Initially, it took me a while to understand it. Although, I eventually read it in parts and was able to understand the meaning, which I really appreciated. Truth states that her rights and respect as a person can be expressed like cup measurements. As a black woman, her respect was measured in a pint, while a white woman

“We have been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again, but we have been long enough trodden now, we will come up again, and now I am here” (Truth). In her speech “Ain’t I a Woman”, Sojourner Truth addressed the issues regarding the equality of African Americans and women. Sojourner Truth, a runaway slave, eventually became a powerful speaker and abolitionist continually fighting for her African American people.

Sojourner Truth was enslaved for 28 years of her life. Even though she could not read or write, she was an excellent public speaker. In her speech ‘Ain’t I a Woman,’ Sojourner Truth’s strong-willed and courageous character is revealed through her examples in the speech. Truth’s examples of how she has done a lot of hard work and how she and other women could work just as well as men reveal her strong-willed character.

In the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, by Sojourner Truth, and the “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” essay, written by Mary Wollstonecraft, the rights and place of women in this nation are discussed. The tones used in the two passages are much different from each other. In Sojourner Truth’s speech, “Ain’t I a Woman”, she uses very lax phrasing and wording in order to portrays a very straight-forward tone. Phrases like “all talkin’ ‘bout rights”(Truth 651), “be in a fix pretty soon”(651), and “that’s it honey”(652) are phrases one would not usually choose for a speech about women rights.

Since the beginning, the United States` government, racial slavery had conquered various American identities. “Racism sprung early colonial times due the slavery riot incidence misinterpretations, leading full men, women, and children racial slavery of all different ethnic backgrounds” (Hooker 1). African-Americans held a life long work and Caribbean island shipment originating and affective progression to American colonies. “An importation of 4,000,000 Negroes were held in bondage by Southern planters” (Webstine).Advanced time went, and Northern states nurtured a rapid industrial revolution; Factory introduction, machines, and hired workers replaced any agricultural need of existing slaves. Southern states, however, maintained