Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

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Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech is very well known and nearly everyone has heard of it. Before talking about his speech, let’s get a little background information on who Martin Luther King Jr. is. Martin Luther King Jr. is the second child of Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King born in Atlanta, Georgia, who was a Baptist minister and social activist (History.com, Introduction). He played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until assassination in 1968 (History.com, Introduction). He never actually wanted to join the ministry, he was on the path to studying medicine and law, but was influenced by his theologian to change his course of study. He tended to about write and promote nonviolent…show more content…
The author’s purpose here is to invoke change in the people of America to rise up and stand against the injustice of withholding freedoms form the Negro population who clearly have the same rights as any other American living in this country. It would seem that Martin Luther King Jr. is appealing to everything, to logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos. He is giving this speech during the Civil Rights Movement (kairos) talking about how freedom and rights need to be given accordingly. He is hoping to appeal to the logical side of Americans that this is dumb that one majority has all the freedoms, but yet another is denied the rights given to them and clearly stated in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Where is the sense in that? Freedom for one, but slavery for the rest? Really people, think about this. The same is used to appeal to the ethos and pathos of the situation. They tend to go hand in hand. The unfair and unjust treatment of a person is enough to make any person sick their stomach. Just image if that were you being treated like that. The events that happened at Selma sparked outrage with the public and gained the wrong kind of international attention for the whites. Martin Luther King Jr. stands by his claims that they will free one day (King). His purpose was obtained and reached…show more content…
The first is the red herring fallacy when he says “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt” (King). Here he is trying to divert attention away from the argument at hand by shifting the focus onto America giving the Negro people a hard time. Circular reasoning is also present in this speech by him basically saying the same thing over and over again, just in a different way. Blacks need more freedom, as with the red herring that example works here as well. The straw man argument in his speech is from this section: “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition” (King). He is trying to appeal to both sides, black and white, that their should be equal rights. He is not helping his case by singling out the white man and saying they are 100% responsible for how things
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