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Rhetorical Devices In John F. Kennedy's Speech

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Presidents and leaders alike pick us up when we feel down. These extraordinary men strived to fight for others' rights. John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King had given a speech in front of their people, and these speeches were created towards the circumstances they were surrounded by at the time. They had used a variety of rhetorical devices to create an extraordinary speech to motivate their citizens to help defend others’ rights. One of these amazing speeches is by John F. Kennedy, and he was giving his "Inaugural Address" when he had been elected as president, and he used rhetorical devices in his speech to motivate his audience to defend the rights of others. His speech is to persuade his citizens and other …show more content…

The first rhetorical device he uses is repetition, "...the Negro still is not free...the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled…the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty…the Negro is still languished…” This part of his speech is an example of repetition because not only is it repeated. He wants to emphasize this feeling of how the Negros were being treated so others can stand up and help defend their rights. Moreover, he says "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." This shows the use of ethos because Mr. King had used God as the celebrity figure in his speech. I believe he's using God to let everybody see that they're equal and perfect as Christianity says they are. This will persuade them because religion was an important factor in everyone's lives. Another point often overlooked is his use of pathos, even though this is one example, he had used this effortlessly throughout his speech, "We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality." This line just speaks so much because it can give you an idea about how horrible they were treated. And this just lets you sympathize with

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