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The Pledge Of Allegiance Of The United States

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The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States can be analyzed from two general perspectives: that of the speaker and that of the author. The first perspective is more familiar, especially to those who went through the American public education system. This is the perspective of the physical speaker, who delivers the pledge to the United States Flag, which is the audience. Typically, this speaker is a child in a school but it could also be a government official in a government meeting, among other settings. The second and less obvious perspective is that of the author of the text: Francis Bellamy, or the official adopter of the pledge: the United States Congress. Both can be considered to be the author of this artefact. For the sake of this analysis, we will assume the author to be the United States government and their intended audience to be the United States population. As this short artefact is examined and analyzed from these perspectives, one will be able to identify how it is densely packed with deeper meaning through the use of rhetoric.
From the perspective of the speaker, the Pledge of Allegiance is a powerful statement. The kernel of the sentence is concise and rich: “I pledge allegiance”. Consider how this short phrase’s diction fills it with meaning. According to Dictionary.com, the verb “to pledge” means “to bind by or as if by a pledge”, where the noun “pledge” is “a solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something”. The speaker of this

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