We have currently been studying oral rhetoric in AP English and the Civil Rights Movement in AP US History, so I thought that I would combine the two subjects and analyze Dr. King's famous I Have A Dream speech.
On August 28th, 1963 during the famous March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his speech to the large crowd assembled by the Lincoln Memorial. He argues that although Abraham Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years ago, black Americans are far from being free, and although they are no longer slaves, America still has yet to keep its promise and they demand justice. Dr. King wants significant changes and refuse to let their oppressors to quit procrastinating, and he urges blacks to continue to fight for freedom and equality.
Dr. King uses many rhetorical devices to help get his point across. The most prominent is his use of anaphora, or repeating words at the beginning of neighboring clauses. Dr. King repeats the phrase "I have a dream" in eight successive sentences, and this emphasis through repetition makes this phrase much more memorable, and, by extension, make Dr. King's speech much more memorable. Dr. King also uses metaphors to highlight contrasting concepts. For example, he says, "joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity," and contrasts segregation with racial justice.
You can see Dr. King's I Have A Dream speech below:
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