A Rhetorical Analysis Of Robert Francis Kennedy's Speech

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Shana Burleson English 103 Dr. Sura September 18, 2012 Remarks on Remarks It was April fourth, 1968, a windy and cold afternoon in Muncie, Indiana. Robert Francis Kennedy was taking his last question from the audience he was speaking to on his presidential campaign trail. A young black boy had raised his hand and asked Kennedy if he really believed in the “good faith of white people toward minorities.” Kennedy affirmed that yes, he did; after all, this was the faith he was trying to cultivate as a presidential candidate. Minutes later, before he boarded the airplane that would take him to Indianapolis for his first big campaign speech in the state, Kennedy was taken aside and told that Dr. Martin Luther King had just been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. After the initial shock, Kennedy’s first response to the news was, “You know, it grieves me…that I just told that kid this and then walk out and find that some white man has just shot their spiritual leader” (Schlesinger 874). Although his campaign advisors, the police chief, the…show more content…
The reputation, credibility, and tone of the speaker are all encompassed in this strategy, which can be equaled to a resume of ethics presented to a prospective employer at a job interview. In “Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Kennedy uses epideictic rhetoric, a branch of rhetoric that falls under ethos and basically means praise and blame rhetoric, as shown in the following excerpt: “Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort” (Kennedy). This is an example of the “praise” part of epideictic rhetoric, which he uses to acknowledge the great significance of Dr. King’s life and work, showing the audience that he does respect and realize the great magnitude of their loss. A little farther on Kennedy introduces the “blame” part of epideictic

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