Tools for Analyzing Dimensions of Language and Persuasive Symbols

Due to the rapidly changing America, in his farewell address, Ronald Reagan expresses the need for unification of America, and America’s culture. In Reagan’s address, he uses many rhetorical devices to advance his purpose of unifying America, for instance, Reagan utilizes tone, syntax, and pathos to portray his pride, hopefulness, and patriotism for America. He uses these devices to show Americans of the unification America needs.

Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. She uses the strategies of parallelism, pathos and diction to get her message out and to help her reader receive it. And thus Thatcher can convince her readers into believing what she says.

As a person who was known for his ability to speak publicly, and communicate comprehensible meanings while inspiring the people of his nation, President John F. Kennedy (JFK) gave his inaugural address on January 20th, 1961 in Washington D.C.. JFK was widely distinguished for his ability to use rhetoric in front of the masses, and in mass media. Like many authors and penman, President Kennedy implemented huge doses of rhetorical strategies in his speech, focusing on the appeals of Aristotle: ethos, logos and pathos. Ethos is used to convince the audience of the author’s credibility, logos is an appeal through the use of logic and reasoning, while pathos is an emotional appeal (Gayle et al). JFK applied all these rhetorical appeals

Authors, people and writers over time have used the available means of persuasion and making sure that they include what the rhetorical situation is. In the four texts about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that talk about the first humans that landed on the moon, all were effective due to them showing ethos, pathos, logos and soaps which are the rhetorical appeals that one has to use when making an argument in a rhetorical situation.

The first chapter introduced the reader to the art of rhetoric. He describes how rhetoric works through real life examples. He demonstrates ways that rhetoric persuades us like, argument from strength, and seduction. He tells the reader that the sole purpose of arguing is to persuade the audience. He showed that the chief purpose of arguing is to also achieve consensus, a shared faith in a choice.

Aristotle has an idea that there are three rhetorical appeals people can use to persuade someone else – ethos, pathos and logos. Each of them is very useful and the persuasion will be most effective when three of them are all used. Amy Tan used all in “Mother Tongue.”

Any speech tries to persuade the audience to accomplish the goal of the speaker. There are multiple modes of persuasion. These modes include Logos and Pathos. Logos is the actual evidence and argument whereas pathos is the speakers appeal to the audience’s emotions. In Mary Fisher’s 1992 Republican National Convention Address also known as “A Whisper of AIDS” Fisher speaks to America about the seriousness of HIV and AIDS. Fisher uses both logos and pathos to appeal to the audience. She urges America to take action by using evidence and experiences to promote emotions and certain attitudes to her audience.

The rhetorical situation refers to “a situation in which people’s understanding can be changed through messages.” (Zarefsky, 12). The rhetorical situation analysis consists of four elements: audience, occasion, speaker and speech, each assessing the quality of speech. In this essay, I will analyze the rhetorical situation of the historical speech “The Challenger Address” delivered by the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

The most obvious way President Reagan delivers rhetoric to his audience is through his own ethos. Ronald Reagan wasn’t just your average president; he was a communicator. Reagan started his career as a sports announcer and continued on as an actor, which led to his later career in state and national politics. By the time President Reagan had delivered his address, the president had been in the spotlight his entire career and was looked up to worldwide. He had established an extrinsic ethos well before delivering this speech. By being the president of the free world, Reagan’s audience

John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech is certainly one to remember. It’s memorable not for its length, but for the effective content that it beholds. He entices readers by the use of strong rhetoric techniques. His inaugural analyzes style of writing, such as diction, tropes, schemes, and syntax, and applies the concept of it effectively throughout the speech. A reader performs rhetorical analysis to examine how authors attempt to persuade their audiences by looking at the various components that make up the art of persuasion. Moreover, it is most essential to be able to understand the relationship among the speaker, subject, and audience, which President Kennedy adequately exploits in his speech.

Throughout history, persuasion has been used by world leaders to captivate people’s hearts, minds, and their attention. A great example of this is in the 1960’s when Martin Luther King Jr. created a movement of equality among all the races. In today’s world, many people know Donald Trump as trying to persuade voters to dissipate from a certain mindset when it comes to voting. A farmer, astronomer, and author named Benjamin Banneker wrote a persuasive letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, this demonstrates that persuasion has been a strategy in writing for hundreds of years. In his letter, Benjamin Banneker’s uses some rhetorical strategies such as a passive-aggressive tone, compare/contrast, and emotional appeal to spread his message that slavery must be abolished completely.

The last element of the rhetorical situation is speech. Reagan’s primary objective of this speech was to show his condolence to those of who suffered from the accident and involve audience to join for grief. Throughout his speech his ideas were carried in a coherent way, without deviating from his objective. Reagan achieved this through using various words and phrases that magnify his emotion. Using phrases such as “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of god” illustrated his feeling towards the situation without much of explanation. In addition, because he understood that the audience of this particular speech consisted of diversity of people, he used words that are more approachable and easy to the audience.

Gerard A. Hauser covers a plethora of details on how to create a well-made persuasive argument in his book, an Introduction to Rhetorical Theory; however, he covered three specific essentials that are necessary for persuasion: the components logos, pathos and ethos; purposive discourse and rhetorical competence; identification. I will argue for each constituent, respectively, to prove that persuasion cannot thrive without the aforementioned essentials.

When choosing my speech topic, I thought about many different topics. I considered doing mine on abortion, more funding for Alzheimer’s research, and many others. I finally decided on doing my speech on Star Wars. I narrowed my ideas down to this one for many reasons. While I do feel strongly about making abortion illegal, I did not want to talk about this in front of the class. I know that there are varying opinions on abortion, and I wouldn’t have been able to give my speech without offending someone. I decided on Star Wars because many people either love it or are indifferent towards it, and I knew I wouldn’t offend anyone by giving my speech on this topic.

One way to perceive language as a dynamic system, she argues: “While the language can be conceptualized as aggregations of paradigmatic and syntagmatic units (e.g. phonemes, morphemes, sentences, etc.), it is also true that a view of language as a dynamic system can be adopted.” That is, language can be regarded as an accumulation of elements or products, but their use in actual discourse reflects the dynamism and the variability of language. The other shared way that language is viewed to be dynamic is when dynamic is paralleled with growth. Diachronically, the alterations languages experience are nonlinear. The author explains that novel forms enter and leave the language in unforeseen manner, for example, the terminology growth to refer to the new concepts and products as a result of development in technologies.