Rhetorical Strategies In I Have A Dream Speech

In the letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963, Dr. King is answering criticism from white clergy men. King stumbled upon a statement in a newspaper while in jail and felt the need to write on it. He did it to explain why he was in jail. After all Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a nonviolent protestor. Kings says “I am in Birmingham because in justice is here.” Dr. King wants to see a change. This paper will examine King’s uses of rhetorical devices to appeal to his audience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s letter “Letter from Birmingham Jail” reveals all three rhetorical appeals. It appeals to ethos, logos and pathos.

Martin Luther King Jr., an American Baptist minister and a Civil Rights activist, became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is widely known for his speech that took place on 28 August 1963, “I Have a Dream.” This speech aimed toward the entire nation. King’s main purpose in this speech was to convince his audience to demand racial justice and for them all to stand up together for their rights. In this speech, King uses emotional and logical appeal to gain the audience's support. He applied many rhetorical devices to his speech to connect with the audience’s emotions, and to logically support his arguments.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, King uses different rhetoric devices to advance his purpose, which is the African Americans have suffered too many injustices to keep quiet any more. The different rhetoric devices he uses are ethos, pathos, and logos.

Rhetorical devices are a part of many great speeches and essays. Most people just read or listen to the speech or essay, not realizing the rhetorical device which enhances the feelings and introspection received from the piece of literature. Imagine a speech where there was no hidden or deeper meaning, no relation or connection to listeners’ personal life. It would be boring and everyone would lose interest. Rhetorical devices are used by great orators such as Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lin-Manuel Miranda to draw the audience into really evaluating and hearing the deeper meaning in their speeches.

On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an open letter to African-Americans and all Americans who care about the civil right movement. In order to defend the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism and respond to being called an outsider, King wrote his famous letter “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” So why the King’s letter is so powerful and convincing to the readers? Is it because of his identity of civil-rights leader and his credibility(ethos)? Is it by the reason of the argument “there are just laws and unjust laws" (King) which he exerted numerous theoretical basis with utmost efforts(logos)? Or, It’s due to his passionate writing style and the description of the image of the oppressed black people(pathos). Actually, It’s all of them. These are the rhetorical method King used in his letter.

Martin Luther King Jr., the author of “Letter to Birmingham Jail,” that was written in 1963, uses many rhetorical strategies throughout his letter;. Additionallyconsequently, he uses these strategies to get his points across. For example,The rhetorical devices he employsuses are repetition, he uses ethos, and he uses rhetorical questions. During the time he gave his speech, was during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, segregation was happening, and racial discrimination between blacks and whites is commonplace.were not treated equally. King uses d rhetorical strategies in order to emphasize what he was most passionate about; he was his passionate about - equality and nonviolent protestings, for he was a black himself. He usesd his letter in order to bring about make a change. Therefore, he needed to really get the listeners’ attention.

Martin Luther King Jr. had written the Letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963. King was a well-known minister-- particularly throughout the southern region, and a great advocate who fought non-violently for justice and equality for the Negro. The use of the word “Negro” sets the timeline. King used every approach from the Aristotelian appeal in order to seize the moment while writing this letter. Immediately, the use of the rhetorical tools of logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos carried the words in his letter and credibly formed a discourse of morality, knowledge, and purpose. A valid, and credible argument was designed by using ethos-- for the most part in maintaining an assertive and persuasive tone, while simultaneously refuting the ideals of the opposing views and criticisms from the authority and his fellow white clergymen who also supposedly shared religious ideologies as Martin Luther King Jr.

In Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. King uses the rhetoric devices of ethos, pathos, and logos throughout the whole letter. While each component of his letter is an important key part of the process of persuasion, I believe that paragraph twenty-one is the strongest within his letter. Within this paragraph King uses multiple examples of mainly logos, but also pathos and egos in harmony in order to further prove his point of persuasion to his audience. These rhetoric devices were used in a way that I believe gave Martin Luther King Jr. the upper hand in approaching his audience. His audience throughout the paper was broad, but I believe that this paragraph addressed an important audience: The Clergymen. Not only does King use these rhetoric devices, he uses them in way that bring about the most benefits in terms of persuading his audience to agree

Martin Luther King Jr wrote an extremely powerful letter that created awareness within the Negro community that displayed use of logos, pathos, and ethos effectively. King writes from Birmingham Jail to the clergymen using the rhetorical appeals to persuade, particularly the white community that, “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever” (King 7) by being the voice of the Negro communities. Even though the letter was written to diminish the clergymen’s assertions about the Negro community, King wrote a timeless piece of literature that moved both the white and Negro communities. Balanced sentence structures offered logical and concrete arguments that were addressed by Dr King through the heavy use of logos. King argues against the

King used logos and pathos in both texts his use if pathos was a lot more adequate and sufficient. For example in Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech he said that “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitter hatred” (Dr. King 262). By using a more relatable potent and pursuing language Dr. King won the side of many. By using this language he had people of color stand by his side and fight for freedom all over. Another example is Dr. King’s Letter From Birmingham letter; “ … when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”-- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” (Dr. King 276). Using this powerful dominant language helps whites to understand and people of color to take his side and stand with him. He proves to colored people that he is serious and worthy of their

On August 28th, 1963, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He spoke passionately for 17 minutes on his views about human equality for African Americans at one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in history. King played a major role in ending the segregation for African Americans. His rhetorical language left an impact on America. Through his use of appeals like ethos, logos, pathos, and other rhetorical techniques. He influenced Americans to believe in the notion that all men are created equal.

MLK Use of Rhetoric “Letter from Birmingham jail” and “I Have a dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King are both significant to the civil rights movement. In 1963 and 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered two of the most authentic pieces known to time. He wrote the pieces with such charisma combining deeply rooted emotion and passion for civil rights. Both his speech and letter express his obsession for the nation to look past the color of their neighbors skin but to look at the content of their character. Kings use of rhetoric in these two selections contrasts because his purpose is not the same.

“I have a dream that one day all men are created equal.” Arguably the most powerful quote said by the most powerful men at the most powerful of speeches known as the “I Have a Dream Speech” during the African American Civil Rights Movement. So, it does require deep analyzation to fully grasp the piece and the author as whole. Analyzing the style of the author as a writer and a speaker, the audience and the rhetorical themes will help you to fully grasp the piece and the author. The author his name, Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King is an astonishing speaker. He is also a great writer too. Martin Luther King’s speech changed the landscape of civil rights immediately and for years to come. Since there is the speech itself and a written piece I will be analyzing a mix of both from the speech and the written peace.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech is one of the most heart moving and powerful speeches of all times. Dr. King’s use of academic language and strong vivid words assisted him to express his dream for the nation to come. An element that immediately stands out is the song-like tone the speech contains, because Dr. King uses alliteration which creates a nice rhythm that gives it musical feel. Many people say that music is what gives meaning to words, and this is exactly what Dr. King did.

“[The] Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation,”.stated Martin Luther King, Jr. in his speech “I Have A Dream,”.which he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, during a march on Washington (1).King’s purpose in his speech was to expound on the need for change in civil rights, especially for black Americans. By utilizing repetition, an extended metaphor and light and dark imagery,King connects logically and emotionally to his audience to evoke a sense of power to overcome racism.