Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Child labor is the use of children in industry or business, especially when illegal or considered inhumane. Child labor has been an ongoing problem for many years all around the world. Many people have taken a stand to fight against the devastating problem of child labor. Florence Kelley was a successful fighter, as she fought for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women. To deliver a message over a strong topic such as child labor, a sense of strength, intelligence, and passion is needed, and Kelley truly had it throughout her message connecting with her audience. In order to create a positive effect and make a change towards this situation she used rhetorical strategy, appealing to emotion, credibility, and facts, she also

She uses ethos, logos, and pathos to reach to her audience. When using pathos she appealed to emotions, for example, “No one in this room tonight can feel free from such participation”(Kelley 65) making the audience feel a sort of guilt and fault in unison. Also, she states, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, 20 in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy”(Kelley 18), this creates an image of horror, of the inhumane treat towards the children, it makes the audience look at themselves as participants of this ongoing issue, feel pity, sadness and frustration, feeling like there is nothing they can do to help. Afterwards, she uses credibility such as acquired knowledge from past experiences in order to make her message credible. To portray credibility she uses specifics we unconsciously choose to ignore such as, “The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories”(Kelley 66), in addition to the fact that she probably witnessed these events. However, Kelley states how she would use her limited

The interpretation of diction is a person’s writing and speaking style. To show her style she took a very unique turn into her choice of words. For example she used phrases such as “little beasts of burden”(Kelley 76), to exaggerate her point of view towards the children’s tasks. In Line 32 (Kelley 32) she states, “In Georgia there is no restriction whatever!”, creating a sense of tone, also showing the attitude taken by that state towards child labor, a very uncaring and such low value to something so impacting. While getting deeper into the text she states “ What can we do to free our consciences?”(Kelley 85), putting questions within her message makes the speech feel like a wake up call to do something, the style she uses makes you think, stay awake, and at times even do something towards the worriment. Kelley’s style had a tone of frustration, although it was full of emotion making you think making you ask