Persuasive Speech Analysis

There have been tons of wonderful, inspiring, and intriguing speeches in the world throughout time. From Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream Speech”, to the “Gettysburg Address” written by Abraham Lincoln, or even a speech by a girl or guy running for class president. Either way, while listening to these great speeches, a thought might cross a person’s mind that says “man, this is a great speech. It is so inspiring. I agree with everything this person is saying”. But here is the question that might not cross the mind very often, but why are these speeches so wonderful, inspiring, and intriguing? An answer to this question is Aristotle's “models of persuasion”: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is an argument based on facts, while pathos is an appeal to emotion, and ethos is the appeal of credibility. Even if a person were to know what each of these were, they might not have connected the dots on how they show up in orations. In the book “Julius Caesar”, written by William

To begin his speech, he starts out with a few effective uses of ethos to prove his credibility. “I, myself” (Sentence 1), Churchill exclaims, to remind everyone listening that he is the Prime Minister of England, and is a respected and honorable human. The use of him saying “I” during a speech is obviously normal, but with the placement of the word “myself”, which follows “I”, emphasizes even more to the audience that he is the respected Prime Minister of Britain. Churchill not only has ethos in his speech to prove his credibility, but the country as well. Britain “shall prove [themselves] once again able to defend [their] Island home” (Sentence 1). “Once again” reassures the listeners that Britain was in a similar situation before, but succeeded in getting out of the trouble they were in. The placement of ethos was during the beginning of his speech so that he can get the attention of who is