Rhetorical Devices Used In I Have A Dream Speech

Three words: "I have a dream". These infamous words was listened by 200,000 Americans on August 1963, and withstood the test of time through the course of the 21st century. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a Dream" is still ingrained through millions of heads and thoughts in the world. The midst of the 1960’s was a time of turmoil and grief where blacks that were supposedly alleged to be equal after the Civil War received complete isolation from the equity that America was supposed to abide by. But, Martin Luther King Jr. shined a beacon of hope and took action against racism that was tearing the United States apart through his iconic “ I Have a Dream” speech. King effectively uses a plethora of linguistic devices, such as extended metaphors,
On and on, MLK keeps on expressing that “ Now is the time to…..lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. ” and repeatedly keeps on lamenting that “ I have a dream…” The repeated use of these two phrases have a synergistic effect with each other because it is telling the audience to take action and do something about the ongoing issue that is shaking America to the core. Martin Luther King is irritated at the audience for not doing anything to make a change in society, which is why he keeps on repeatedly saying that “ Now is the time”, because he wants action to be done and not delayed.He wants the audience to feel irate and pressing.The use of “ I have a dream” is used a multitude of times in his speech; he uses this phrase to make the audience realize that his dream of racial equity is in fact reachable. MLK not only compels about his dream, but authorizes his dream to be “ ...deeply rooted in the American dream”. Automatically, this influences the audience into changing the perception of what the American dream is. He is issuing a call to action in order to achieve his dream to the audience which gives the audience an appeal to pathos. This connection is not only vital to the audience, but serves as the foundation/ purpose of his speech: a call to action. The appeal to pathos established in the
A clear example of this happening is when King addresses in his speech that “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This allusion is a tribute to the allusion in the Bible of Amos 5:24. It specifically states : “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”Another example of one, is to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when King states “Five score years ago” at the start of his speech, which King is directly lamenting to the phrase “Four score and seven years ago” that started in the beginning of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.The biblical allusion that King refers to explains how people think of a stream as being mighty and overwhelming, which elevates King’s speech because he refers to the American population as the stream. The reference to a stream and “ justice rolling down like waters” is to symbolize how Martin Luther King Jr. is telling the audience that they need to be tenacious until justice is as abundant as water. The reference to the stream is a brilliant way of trying to achieve racial equity,