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Speeches and Orations

Sites about Rhetoric

 Link 1: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Silva Rhetoricae is a comprehensive site about rhetoric housed at the Brigham Young University Web site. The links on the left (under “Trees”) provide information about effective speaking and writing. Under “Canons of Rhetoric,” you’ll find a reference to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech and an example of a rhetorical analysis of his speech. Using this as a guide, conduct your own analysis of King’s use of Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery. You may want to conduct some additional research to help in your analysis of the speeches below. The following sites can help you with that background information:

www.historychannel.com

www.pbs.org

Writing Assignments

You may know the difference between a simile and a metaphor, but what about catachresis and aposiopesis? Choose at least five of the figures of speech defined on the American rhetoric Web site (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricaldevicesinsound.htm) and see if you can identify them in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s or John F. Kennedy’s speeches. For example, what figure of speech does King use when he says “we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check”?

Compare King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/Ihaveadream.htm) with his “Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence” speech (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm). How do these speeches differ in arrangement, tone, style, and delivery? How did the setting (both physical and historical) have an important impact on the way these two speeches were delivered?

Now listen to John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm. Make the same comparisons between King’s “Dream” speech and Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address, but this time focus on audience. How did the audience of these two speeches differ, and how was the delivery shaped to reach that audience?

Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxballot.htm) was delivered on Easter Sunday in 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom. Comparing Malcolm X’s speech with King’s “Dream” speech is an interesting study in content and form (see “Content/Form” at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm). You may know that the content of Malcolm X’s speech differs from the content of King’s, but what about form, or how the content is delivered? See if you can find both similarities and differences.

Listen to Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, and to Franklin Roosevelt’s and Ronald Reagan’s (see links below). Can you identify specific conventions that these speeches follow? What is the structure of each speech? Consider the historical context of each of these speeches, the physical setting, and the audience to which each was addressed (use both www.historychannel.com and www.pbs.org for more information). How did these variables affect the way these speeches were delivered?

John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkinaugural.htm

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html

Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural address:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreagandfirstinaugural.html

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