Citizen Kane Speech

Citizen Kane Speech
Brandy Winstead
Eng 102
Week One

Examples of Bias in the speech: The speech "Charles Foster Kane Campaigns for Governor," is rife with bias, full of fallacies, and uses numerous rhetorical devices, yet comes across as a very convincing argument for Kane as Governor nonetheless! In the speech's first section, when the campaign manager is talking, we see an example of bias toward Boss Jim Gettys. The campaign manager shows bias in favor of Kane against Jim Gettys, also. It also shows bias when Kane is speaking about “Jim Gettys having something less of a chance”.

Examples of fallacies: When he makes the statement “the evil domination of Boss Jim Gettys”, we see an example of ad hominem, because he is attacking Gettys. The statement that about “the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim Gettys political machine” is an example of ad hominem, also.
The campaign manager uses apple-polishing about Kane being the “only one man who can rid the politics of this state” of Boss Jim Gettys. The fallacy of a false dilemma is when the campaign manager says, “There is only one man who can rid the politics of this State of the evil domination of Boss Jim Gettys. I am speaking of Charles Foster Kane, the fighting liberal, the friend of the working man, the next Governor of this State, who entered upon this campaign.....”. False dilemma is used again when Kane remarks, “Now, however, I have something more than a hope. And Jim Gettys, Jim Gettys has something less than a chance. Every straw vote, every independent poll shows that I’ll be elected”. The straw man fallacy is present when Kane says, “The working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests. The decent, ordinary citizens know that I’ll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed”. The next fallacy is Kane's assertion that he wants to protect the underprivileged, followed by the disclaimer that he's too busy to make specific promises. This technique of making circular arguments is a fallacy known as circulus in probando.

Examples of Rhetorical devices used: Hyperbole was used when Kane says “the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim W. Gettys’ political machine – now in complete control of the government of this State”. Alliteration is used in the statement “I’ll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed”. The Horselaugh device was used throughout the speech by making the crowd laugh with him. The Asyndeton type of rhetorical device, where conjunctions between words are omitted to give the effect of extemporaneousness is used in the passage where Kane says ""with one purpose only: to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim W. Gettys' political machine -- now in complete control of the government of this State".