Richard Nixon's Rhetorical Analysis: Peace With Honor

Peace with Honor – Richard M. Nixon – Rhetorical analysis

In the context of a long-term proxy war’s ending, executed in the country of Vietnam. The factual victory was held by the North Vietnam who achieved a communist regime and thereby defeated the western idea of a democracy. In this occasion Nixon held a speech, which addressed the surrender of America with the discourse “Peace with Honor”.

The speech can be parted in to three segments. The first one being an informative description of the situation. The second one is embossed with the Aristotelian term called ethos and third is filled with pathos. With that said, the first part is the actual statement: “we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor
Though this time it is used introverted towards America, and not the outside world. Pathos dominates this statement because it implies that soldiers had to give the ultimate sacrifice to allow South Vietnam peace, which also portrays the war with a higher meaning and purpose. There appear an amount of carefully selected loaded words in the text that is relevant to point out. Nixon speaks of a right kind of peace that works in coherence with the soldiers not dying in vain. He uses this loaded word connection to indicate that there has been achieved a very unique kind of peace in Vietnam. Only one comparison appears in the speech and it is very important for the outcome of the successfulness of it: “Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the
Johnson is referred to as a man of war it is because that he was the president who led America into the war. Nixon wants to achieve pathos through this with appealing to the citizen who voted for Johnson. And he wants to show that he able of being a compassioned leader too. This statement relies on the listeners trust in Nixon because Johnson is dead and the statement only provides and relies on personal knowledge between Nixon and Johnson. So if the listener determines not to believe this compassion between the two leaders the statement loses credibility and Nixon loses ethos. The front page of this rhetorical analysis shows a word cloud, which proportionally sizes the most used phrases in the speech. As seen, it is Peace with honor, which is also the name of the speech. This is the most central rhetorical trope used and this is because it connects with a former held speech were Nixon promises an honorable end to the Vietnam War. The trope is both embossed of intertextuality and loaded words and it is repeated a lot. Intertextualy the quote stretches all the way back to 30 B.C. Where Kaiser Augustus pledged Cleopatra to make peace to keep her honor or else he would wipe out her entire army. The loaded word honor is used to redeem the national patriotism, assuring that America only redrew because of the interest in American ideals. The American ideal in the sentence is peace but Nixon speaks of a right kind of peace that refers to peace