Rhetorical Analysis Of President Kennedy

On a cold January day America’s newly appointed president John F. Kennedy delivered his inauguration address that was incredibly important to America’s success during the Cold War. Kennedy uses his speech as a call to arms, but not only to America but the World and our allies as a whole. He uses his strong powerful voice to appeal to the ethics of the country in the beginning of his speech telling America about the promise we made when we were founded and that we must uphold it still today, telling America we must make a difference. Kennedy also uses ethics to explain that we the people are united no matter what your background or where you are from, he refers to the Americas as one place, because he wants for us to feel unified not divided. Furthermore Kennedy’s use of powerful imagery, logic and pathos allows for him to effectively call the people of the World together during this terrible time.

In the beginning, President Kennedy starts his speech by addressing the issue at hand by using allusion and powerful diction. Kennedy is speaking to his American audience on the unfitting civil disputes that have erupted throughout the nation during his presidency. “ Today, we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all that wish to be free.” This sentence in Kennedy’s speech demonstrates not only the problem at hand in America using the literary tactic allusion, but it is also used to inspire the American people to make a difference in the world on how we treat each other. That we are all created equal and should as all our mothers have voiced before, “treat others as you would like to be treated.” Thus, making way for conversation to move to the next stage, logics.

In the beginning of his speech, Kennedy utilizes diction in order to evoke a surge of emotions in his audience. Kennedy outlines the gravity of the subject, “steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds...public responsibility...utter contempt for the interests of 185 missions.”

Despite being a Harvard graduate and president of a nation, Kennedy associates himself with the discontented Americans as both “the American people will find it hard, as [he] do[es],” to accept the steel crisis. Throughout his speech, Kennedy’s use of dichotomous language such as “we”, “our,” “their,” and “they” allows Kennedy to vocalize that he and “185 million Americans” are facing this crisis together while painting the steel companies as their common enemy. Through his language, he adopts a wrathful yet sentimental tone in order to appeal to the shared feelings with his fellow American people. As a result, he is able to build the “us” versus “them” mentality amongst the American people to enhance the shared dissatisfaction towards the steel companies’ hike in steel prices. By employing forceful vocabulary, Kennedy elevates the “us” versus “them” mentality as he continues to pit the steel companies against “every American family.” He describes their actions as “unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance” to once again demonizes the steel companies as a threat towards American interest. By criticizing the steel companies, Kennedy removes himself and his Administration as responsible for the detriments caused by the steel companies, allowing him to further his dissociation from the greedy affluent and reassure the American people that he is on their

Moreover in the speech, John F. Kennedy uses pathos to provoke emotion by saying, “...confronted with grave crises...asking Reservists to leave their homes and family…” This portion of the speech also uses allusion because this Reservist issue is a well known problem and he chooses to address it. Kennedy also provides use for ethos by providing real, worldwide example of crises. The tone of this speech switches over to how consequences play a role in this issue, “...increase costs of homes, autos, appliances…” which is used in place to create a reminder, or alarm, to foreshadow the future of American citizens negatively if steel companies continue to keep those high prices or continue to raise them. Kennedy portrays the impact by saying, “185 million Americans…” are going to have to sacrifice parts of their lives for the selfish desires of greedy steel companies.

The first device that President John F. Kennedy uses to combat the issue of raising steel prices is parallelism. In the second paragraph of his speech, he begins listing outcomes of the dramatic increase in steel prices by saying, "...when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting out energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking Reservists to leave their homes and families for months on end, and servicemen to risk their lives..."(lines 6-12) This is an effective use of parallelism because he builds on the previous statement by starting out the one that follows with the same introduction: "...when we are..." He is trying to prove that America is in a crisis situation and the steel companies increasing their prices is only going to make the situation even worse. He is showing all of the sacrifices that people are making and proving to the steel companies that their high wages are going to have a very negative effect on a people who are sacrificing more than anyone would have ever expected for their country. The second example of parallelism is in the third paragraph of his speech, when he begins by saying, "...it would increase the cost of homes, autos, and appliances, and most other items for every American family. It would increase the cost of machinery and tools to every American businessman and farmer. It would seriously handicap out efforts to prevent an inflationary spiral from eating up the pensions of out older citizens, and our new gains in purchasing power."(lines 23-31) He is pleading to the steel companies to lower their prices through showing them examples

Kennedy continues his appeal to emotion with a weaker, yet still successful attempt. Around election time, seemingly all American’s reveal their inner-patriot, understanding this Kennedy speaks to that inner patriot. Speaking of foreign affairs, he says, “…let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.”(3) This appeal is successful, as speaking of the Hemisphere as a whole represents unity, and also reaches out to the pride within the audience, stating that Americans shall remain in power of all they have worked so hard to obtain.

Throughout Kennedy’s speech you can see many different types of these devices first off, I would like to bring your attention to parallelism. The definition of Parallelism is “Uses of words or phrases in a similar structure”. In his speech he come right out of the gate in the first 5-6 paragraphs and begins to show this. For example on Page (283) Kennedy says, “To those who old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty for old faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of co-operative (SAS) ventures. Divided, there is little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder”. Furthermore he then directly goes into his next statement by saying “To those”. I also think that one of the man reasons his speech captivated not only America's people but many other nations, was due to how he connected with the audience.

Kennedy uses the metaphor “casting off the chains of poverty.” which is an overused and a definite cliche. He also uses fresher and more thought-provoking metaphors “the uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.” Kennedy rotates with his use of figurative language, he will display more cliched and overused metaphors and follow them up with unused material, he does this to connect all of the audience. Shakespeare also used this technique to keep his less-educated audience understanding the concept of his plays and with more advanced jokes

Kennedy begins his speech expressing how “the world is very different” from what it used to be. He uses multiple rhetorical strategies that express and describe how he is going to lead their “very different” country by providing his audience with a sense of community. For example, Kennedy applies juxtaposition to his phrase, “United there is little we cannot do… Divided there is little we can do…” to compare what America can and can’t do when everyone is united. During the time when Kennedy was elected president, the Cold War was at peak of its period. He bravely announced that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” using the rhetorical strategy asyndeton. He uses this particular mechanism to attract his audience and give emphasis to the ideas he wants to communicate. He starts the phrase off with “we,” as he wishes to convey to his listeners that we are going to pay any price, that we are going to bear any burden, that

Former president John F. Kennedy, in his speech, expresses his concerns to the price increase of steel. Using condemning diction, anaphora and numerical evidence, Kennedy criticizes the irresponsibility of the steel industry. Kennedy builds the image of selfish steel corporations by his condemning diction. He first summarizes the unexpected rise of price as an “unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest” (par. 1), which shows how steel corporations oppose the will of people. Stating his claim in such a criticizing way leads to his further attack, where he portrays steel companies as in “ruthless disregard of their public responsibilities” (par.

He directly calls out the steel companies in his speech and shames them in front of the common people. Kennedy is attempting to infer that while the steel companies are relaxing and just raising their prices, the common people are having to make sacrifices and lose their lives.

Kennedy uses pathos to begin his speech, when he says the following, “I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.” (Kennedy) Kennedy touches into the sadness not only he is feeling, but many are feeling. He does this by his usage of the word ‘sad’, in contrast with ‘love’ and ‘peace’. Also, he speaks personally with the crowd when asking them to lower their signs. This makes him seem relatable to the crowd. Kennedy uses

John F. Kennedy applies the rhetorical appeals in his speech to gain the respect, trust, and compassion of his audience. Kennedy uses pathos in order to appeal to the patriotism and emotional side of the American people. He does this when he says the people, “born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by hard and bitter peace” (Paragraph 4). Here he talks about a struggle all the Americans have faced, warfare and a lack of peace. He later

The amount of pathos in Kennedy’s speech is quite significant. That is a given however, as an inaugural address’s objective is to garner support for the president’s administration, and playing to the tune of people’s emotions will ultimately win them over in most cases. That being said, Kennedy plays quite a tune in this speech, as he instill several emotions throughout his speech, ranging from pride to fear – in many cases in conjunction with each other. For the latter, Kennedy starts off his speech with a morbid thought, stating that “The world is very different now. For a man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life” (2). In essence, we as humans have advanced to the point in that we now hang on a balance between the greater good and the greater