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Martin Luther King Use Of Ethos Pathos Logos

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Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963, minister and rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in front of Lincoln memorial to bring awareness to the unfairness of injustice for black people. King's speech was an effort to try and mandate the coming together of the black and white race and finally have the equality between us all be put into force for a free nation. As the speech left King’s mouth and entered 250,000 citizens ears, it left them to think about what point he was trying to make because he uses pathos, logos, and ethos. To start off his attempt to control the minds of the people he used the rhetorical strategy of allusion which, however, is also considered ethos. The Declaration of Independence is how he brought across authority within his speech. He quotes, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” His attempt do this was to stress the feeling of importance given to him by the founding fathers’ idea of freedom. Another way authority was invoked was by him using the Declaration of independence. King uses Lincoln in the quote, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” Lincoln was mentioned because he …show more content…

Injustice was used with specific word choice to make the feeling come across stronger. At the end of the first paragraph King says, “ Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.” The key term for giving injustice a broader meaning is the word withering, which in other word is the fading of the injustice within this unfair world. King not only uses diction, but also analogies. In the text it says, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” This was used because most of king's listeners understand money, which assures King that they will be able to relate to being held a bad

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