Rhetorical Analysis Of John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address

John F. Kennedy was an American politician and he became 35th president of the united state from 1961-1963. Kennedy is most famous in his presidency for his powerful and inspiring speeches. His positive energy made him easy to listen to for all audiences. More than twenty thousand people against a backdrop of deep snow and sunshine when John F. Kennedy was delivering his inaugural. At a time of racial tensions, economic crisis, and people’s fear of war, he needed to bring confidence to the American people. Therefore, Kennedy used many rhetorical strategies to convince the citizens of the United States to become involved with their country. He began to help his country become a firm, confident, and unified nation. He used many different rhetoric strategies such as reputation, antithesis, parallelism and rhetoric questions that made his speech one of the most inspiring speeches of all time. Although Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his wonderful and powerful inaugural address and what he had done to help America will be remembered by people forever.

In grammar, parallelism is the similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words or phrases. And antithesis contrast ideas expressed by parallelism of strong contrast words. Here are some examples: "To those old allies"; "To those new allies"; "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"; and the most famous, “Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country." The use of this rhetorical strategy used many times in his speech builds a contrast of his ideas by setting two opposites against each other. These parallelisms demonstrated emphasize their difference and makes them more rhythmic. As the result, audiences will understand American government's determination and faith. This is why JFK uses antithesis and