“I Have a Dream.” A rhetorical analysis.
Racism, specifically against African-Americans, was one of the biggest issues in the United States from 1890 to 1960. Slavery was abolished in America in 1865, which meant that people who once were slaves would start being treated equally and would have the same rights as every other American citizen. However, the government created laws so that the American population would be segregated. The laws stated that there should be different schools, theaters, and transportation lines for whites and blacks. The segregation gradually became a social problem because it meant that people weren’t being treated equally, and this caused civil rights movement groups to be created. One of the most distinguished activists for the civil rights movement was Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister from Georgia. He participated in non-violent protests and organized campaigns against the segregation. King organized the “March on Washington” in 1963, where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, one of the most famous speeches in the American history. In the speech, Martin Luther King Jr. uses both positive and negative diction, metaphors and repetition to make the audience empathize with his cause and give optimism to African-Americans.
Diction is the choice of words, the way that they are pronounced and the tone they are pronounced in, so that each word is clearly understood. Diction plays a huge role in a character’s pathos, therefore it’s one of the basic ways to appeal to an audience. King uses strong negative words like “brutality”, “persecution”, “captivity” and “poverty” throughout “I Have a Dream” to describe segregation as an issue for the African American society, before and during that time. He explains that separating whites from blacks only causes the latest to feel less important and less free, and implies that the inequality lowers their opportunities to be economically and socially successful. Besides the negative...