Martin Luther King's Rhetorical Tools

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Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech I Have a Dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 celebrating the centennial of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation remains one of his most intelligent and poetic speeches in the American mind. It succeeded at accomplishing this by a dynamically synthesized use of communication techniques while seeking to avoid division, as well as making potentially offensive judgments against a country where black men and women were still segregated. His accomplishment is in inducing the listener to not only participate in his dream, but remember it forever, long after the militant days of civil unrest were over. His knowledge of pathos, logos and other rhetorical techniques served King well. Keith D. Miller writes that King's impetus for carefully designing the speech was determined when he was asked to give it in front of 250,000 people at the monument, as well as to having it televised and sent over radio channels. This opportunity served to put him at the forefront of a movement beginning to suffer from division. To accomplish this greater task, King had to use all the tools at his disposal. Two of the tools King always used are rhetoric and passion; others included devices such as comparison, contrast, and connection. For example, as Miller notes, the audience hears the voices of “Lincoln, Jefferson, Shakespeare, Amos, Isaiah, Jesus, Handel's Messiah, 'America the Beautiful,' a slave spiritual, and the black folk pulpit” (Miller). The audience makes a connection, though within this group are huge contrasts. He is comparing and contrasting a diverse group of educated and uneducated, black and white, and old and young, with the result being that he reaches all of these groups to make a connection to his arguments. King always said that simplicity was the way to connect with an audience. One of the most simple connections he
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