As Barack Obama approached the podium, his speech is focused on Taking Back America. This speech was given in Washington, DC on June 14, 2006. It is directed to the Democratic Party and also the Americans that Obama could try to persuade to believe in what he was saying. In every one of Obama speeches he uses rhetoric to try and persuade the moderate Americans to lean towards his beliefs. He also uses ethos to get his ideology across to the population. He uses pathos to pull in emotional ties and uses logos to make logical arguments that people can easily understand.
Obama puts his ideology into emotional appeals to make the audience relate more to the situation or in other cases feel bad about the situation and make them want to help. He uses situations like, ““no one will notice the single mom whose two jobs won’t pay the bills or the student who can’t afford his college dreams… no one will notice the nearly 2,500 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at Dover Air Force base.” By using this tactic, he makes the audience feel bad for the people involved and it makes them want to help them out. He when talking about the problems the country faces and the people that need help, he underhandedly blames the Bush administration for many things that are out of the governments control. He says, “kids going to schools where the rats outnumber the computers. I’ve had enough of Katrina survivors living out of their cars and begging FEMA for trailers. And I’ve had enough of being told that all we can do about this is sit and wait and hope that the good fortune of a few trickles on down to everyone else in this country.” He is trying to guilt the audience into feeling bad for these victims and in turn vote democratic because he says the party is going to help them. Another pathos appeal he uses is to saying you can’t blame a child who was born into the wrong family where they cannot afford health insurance. He is advocating the health care plan when he says, “It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford – life isn’t fair. It allows us to say to the child who didn’t have the foresight to choose the right parents or be born in the right suburb – pick yourself up by your bootstraps. It lets us say to the guy who worked twenty or thirty years in the factory and then watched his plant move out to Mexico or China – we’re sorry, but you’re on your own.” All of these emotional appeals are what Obama uses to try and persuade people to come to the democratic side.
Obama uses emotional appeals within his arguments to make his arguments seem more logical to the audience. One of Obama’s many persuasive tactics is to say where he finds faults within the current government. When he says that he is tired of “giving billions away to the oil companies when we’re told that we can’t invest in the renewable energy that will create jobs and lower gas prices and finally free us from our dependence on the oil wells of Saudi Arabia… Let it be said that we are the party of an energy independent America. The party that’s not bought and paid for by the oil companies. The party that will harness homegrown, alternative fuels and spur the production of fuel-efficient, hybrid cars to break our dependence on the world’s most dangerous regimes.” He uses logic to state that we need to become energy dependent and use other fuels and hybrid cars. He fails to mention that there are also some flaws within his plan for alternative fuels. Another use of logos he employs is when he is explaining the role of government and the beliefs of both the right and the left. He states that the left wants government to be incorporated in to the lives of the citizens. He makes the point where the right wants government out of the lives of the citizens and then goes on to make the right seem like their view is skewed. He says that a republican would say, “The reason they don’t believe government has a role in solving national problems is because they think government is the problem. That we’re better off if we dismantle it – if we divvy it up into individual tax breaks, hand ’em out, and encourage everyone to go buy your own health care, your own retirement security, your own child care, their own schools, your own private security force, your own roads, their own levees…” but Obama says, “It’s called the Ownership Society in Washington. But in our past there has been another term for it – Social Darwinism – every man or women for him or herself.”
My main concern for my essay is if I am analyzing this speech correctly and if I am getting my point across to the readers.
Intro is captivating . I like the sentence structure in the introduction. I like how you put the date and time of the speech. It makes it better for us to look for the speech if we don’t know already know the speech. “He is trying to guilt the audience into feeling bad for these victims and in turn vote democratic because he says the party is going to help them” I think this sentence captures the whole meaning of the pathos in his speech and I feel like it was worded right. “He fails to mention that there are also some flaws within his plan for alternative fuels.” I feel like this is a weak sentence because in the context of his speech, it wouldn’t be be helpful if he mentioned his flaws.
I feel like you have this organized right. Organization is key in an essay like this. I also feel like you know have it planned right when it comes to talking about ethos, pathos, and logos. I am very interested in reading your conclusion. It will be very interesting to me to see all this come together.
Lizzie’s essay is about the use of ethos, pathos, and logos within Obama’s Taking Back America speech from 2006. The introduction of the essay identifies the purpose of the speech as well as the intended audience, which is important for creating context. One thing that could be changed might be to remove the sentence about how all of Obama’s speeches are persuasive (“In every one of Obama speeches he uses rhetoric to try and persuade the moderate Americans to lean towards his beliefs.”) because it takes the focus off of the specific speech that is being analyzed and puts it on Obama’s speaking in general. Perhaps a good place for this sentence would be in the conclusion to make a broader point about the nature of speech-giving.
“Obama uses emotional appeals within his arguments to make his arguments seem more logical to the audience” is a unique topic sentence. What I like about it is that it blends together ethos and logos to form one coherent point. I hadn’t thought about how using emotional appeal can actually add to the logical part of the argument.
“Obama puts his ideology into emotional appeals to make the audience relate more to the situation or in other cases feel bad about the situation and make them want to help.” For this topic sentence, I might refrain from mentioning exactly how Obama uses ethos to persuade his audience (by being relatable or making the public feel guilty) and instead mention it later in the paragraph. This is just so that there is more to expand upon. For my essay, I’m a little concerned about having enough to say. I have found that keeping topic sentences a little vague and then explaining them later is a good way to extend a point to its maximum.
It seems that the essay is organized by technique (ethos, logos, pathos). It is always difficult to tell exactly how an essay will unfold when it is partially unwritten. Organizing chronological pieces such as speeches is also difficult because the writer has to both explain what the original author was saying as well as incorporate his or her own argument. My essay is organized by the order of events in my artifact, and I explained the rhetorical techniques along the way.
I would be interested in reading about the public reception of Obama’s speech. As we were discussing in class, the effect of rhetoric is just as important, if not more important, than the message itself. Public reaction to political speeches is a very interesting aspect of persuasive rhetoric.