A.) How Did Martin Luther King Convey Power and Authority, and How He Is Persuasive in His ‘I Had a Dream’ Speech, with Reference to His Language Use and Language Studies.

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Martin Luther King was a brave man who played a huge role in the advancement of civil rights using non-violent civil disobedience. He is mostly known for the speech he performed from the steps of the Lincoln memorial, delivering to over 250,000 civil rights supporters. The pragmatics of MLK speech was that it took place in the 1960’s in front of an audience of both black and white American citizens. These would have been religious people who believe that everyone is, and should be equal in society. MLK included biblical passages and references so these people could see where their morals and values lay – ‘glory of the Lord’. He also alludes to The Gettysburg Address, and the US Declaration of Independence – ‘black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. – also a triadic formation. When doing the speech, Martin Luther King had an extremely strongly powered voice, and an extremely strong persuasive voice, but behind his voice he needed words, powerful and persuasive words to make his speech convincing and memorable. Throughout the speech, he used many techniques that make this speech so iconic. MLK used metaphors, emotive language, alliteration, repetition and many more. When MLK spoke, he spoke as a unit- ‘I am happy to join with you today’, ‘history of our nation.’, so everyone felt equal to him, and the audience when he spoke. King also repeated ‘we’ throughout the speech as an inclusive tone. This was a very powerful technique in order to get his point across in the opening line. He used many archaic lexis to make what he was saying ancient like the Bible, as a way of being persuasive- ‘Five score years ago’. Emotive language is always something that gets to people on the inside, MLK used a lot of emotive language to make people see and understand the torment that black people have

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