Civil Rights Comparison

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Martin Luther King's Speech - Pathos

In his speech, Martin Luther King appeals to emotions by basing his dream in the American Dream, a widely pursued goal of the audience and Americans overall. He also appeals to emotions by painting a picture of a society not flawed by racism and the unity that would exist there. Everyone has an intrinsic desire for a utopia. Martin Luther King uses that to make people desire to live in the world he dreams of. He also appeals to emotions by stressing the importance of nonviolence in the civil rights movement. This makes his argument easy to support because it promotes the value of peace along with his goal of equality. Lastly, he appeals to emotions by speaking of the children and the suffering that they experience. This gains the support from the audience because people know that children are weak and could not protect themselves from racial oppression. This gives the people the desire to protect the children from this horrible treatment and support the movement towards racial equality.

Noah Becker

5 comments:

UnknownFebruary 25, 2015 at 8:07 PM
You made solid points about the emotions that Martin Luther King focused on during his speech, but it would have been helpful if you included some hyperlinks to reference some of the events you mentioned. For example, when you mentioned "the children and the suffering that they experience," I didn't really know what you were referring to, so your audience would benefit from more outside sources.
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UnknownFebruary 25, 2015 at 8:07 PM
You made solid points about the emotions that Martin Luther King focused on during his speech, but it would have been helpful if you included some hyperlinks to reference some of the events you mentioned. For example, when you mentioned "the children and the suffering that they experience," I didn't really know what you were referring to, so your audience would benefit from more outside sources.
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UnknownFebruary 25, 2015 at 8:20 PM
MLK's appeal to the emotions of his audience certainly gave his speech a lot more impact. He describes a world of fairness that everyone would want to live in, and tells the audience that it is possible to achieve. His points about children likely struck home with members of all races as they can all relate to wanting the best for their children. Gaining the support of both blacks and whites was critical to achieving the social change that he did.
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UnknownFebruary 26, 2015 at 9:31 AM
I definitely agree that MLK's speech appeals to pathos, but it would have been helpful if you maybe quoted some things from his speech to help the reader better understand what exactly MLK said that made such an impact.
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AnonymousFebruary 26, 2015 at 10:18 AM
In order to make an impactful speech at the time about a social issue that meant so much to so many people, it was very important to use pathos. I think that you did a good job of highlighting the reactions people would have to a comments made throughout the speech, such as using children as an example but I agree that the post could go into more detail and have more quotes.
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Critical Introduction

Mike (Intro/Ethos)

Our names are Mike, Tommy, Ian, Jack, and Noah and we are five English 101S students at the University of Maryland, College Park. We have been studying rhetoric this semester and have been slowly becoming familiar with various rhetorical appeals. Although we are not experts on rhetoric, we have enough familiarity with the appeals to expand on them. We chose the Black Panthers 10-Point Plan and a picture of Marin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington because we felt that both of these works greatly contributed to the Civil Rights Movement through completely opposite perspectives. The Black Panthers’ 1966 “10 Point Plan” radically and aggressively depicted the wants and beliefs of the Black community, while Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington addressed the Black community’s needs through eloquence, peaceful protest, and sophisticated rhetoric. The Black Panthers’ 10-Point plan was aggressive in nature, often expressing radical views. They were not necessarily bad, as many people followed the regime. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach was obviously more peaceful and sophisticated, thus creating more of a politically correct movement.

Jack (Major argument/Stasis)

Our blog shows that the Black Panthers’ 1966 Ten Point Plan radically and aggressively depicted the wants and beliefs of the black community, while Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington addressed the black community’s needs with eloquence, peaceful protest, and sophisticated rhetoric. We compare these different approaches to the Civil Rights Movement by analyzing the ethos, pathos, and logos of each of the texts. Furthermore, we contrasted the types of audiences each text targeted and the audiences with which each text was more successful. Overall our blog analyzes and compares the effectiveness of differing approaches used by MLK and the Black Panthers.

Tommy (Kairos)

The issues represented by the texts are still very relevant today, especially considering the events of the past year such as the riots caused by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and other similar cases. Racially charged protests are not simply a thing of the past. Determining which method of protest, whether it be a more aggressive and assertive stance of the Black Panther Party or the hope-filled non-violent stance of Dr. King, still remains a long unanswered question. Ultimately the answer probably lies in some happy medium between the two. However, we leave it up to the readers to decide which method has been more historically successful, and which approach would work better on the readers themselves.

Noah (Logos)

Our blog begins with analyses of the rhetorical situations of our texts and the major rhetorical arguments in each. We did this to introduce the texts, their backgrounds and the messages they convey to the audience. We then wrote about the rhetorical appeals used in each text to show how the authors intended to impart their arguments. Finally, we analyzed the audience that each text was designed for and the visual elements of each text. We used the analysis of the audience to show how each text was designed to target them. Overall, we introduced the texts and why they were important to get readers interested and engaged in our topic. Then we went into detail about the texts and the methods behind their reasoning and arguments to give readers insight about the texts. Lastly, we showed how the audience and visual elements of the texts further contributed to their purposes and show the impact of each text.

Ian (Pathos)

Although our blog focused on all of the appeals, we found that Dr. King and the Black Panthers especially appealed to the Pathos of their audiences. We not only wanted to examine the pathos of each text individually, but how they related to each other in a time of great social turmoil. We wanted to convey that the March on Washington was a sort of emotional high water mark of the civil rights movement; more progress towards equality was made in the coming years, but not quite to the level of expectations set in 1963. This sense of a letdown with the work of Dr. King was a strong influence in the creation of the Black Panthers. Tired of waiting, he Panthers worked to improve the lives of blacks directly rather than working for racial equality. The causation between the failures of Dr. King and the birth of the Black Panthers, especially in relation to their respective appeals to pathos, was very important, and we tried to highlight it in our blog.