Word Essay
Word Essay
A persuasive speech is one the primary aim of which is to drive the audience to do a particular thing or strive to achieve a certain goal. In politics, most of the speeches seek to persuade the listeners to accept the political purposes of the speaker, to persuade them that the spokesperson is the best candidate in the field or to drive the audience to tackle a certain problem. To do this, the speechmaker tries to create common ground with the audience and highlight the common interests of the orator and listeners as opposed to the differences between them. The Aristotelian method has been used for hundreds of years to analyze persuasive speeches. This paper seeks to analyze Senator Obama’s 2008 speech “A More Perfect Union” using the three-prod method developed by Aristotle that includes ethos, pathos, and logos. Since a speech also depends on the timing and delivery, the analysis will include the element of kairos.
Analysis using the Aristotelian Method
Analysis, according to the Aristotelian method discussed in The Rhetoric, encompasses three aspects. The first of these elements is an ethos that discusses how the credibility of the speechmaker aids or hampers the effective persuasion of a speech (Burgchardt 50). The second one is a pathos that deals with how the speaker can alter the perception of the audience through the storytelling devices and appeals to emotion (Burgchardt 50). This is traditionally considered the weakest of the three rhetorical devices as it does not concern the intellect of the orator or the good delivery of his/her speech but the ability of the spokesperson to manipulate his/her audience by appealing to emotion (Burgchardt 50). The third one, a logos, uses logic and reason to construct an argument through which one’s ideas are not just evident, but which makes the idea persuasive enough (Burgchardt 50). Other than the three traditional ones, there is the aspect of kairos which seeks to define the effect of timing on speech.
President Barack Obama, then the junior Senator from Illinois, delivered the speech "A More Perfect Union" on 18th March 2008. The speech was in reaction to him being called a supporter of Revered Jeremiah Wright, who was accused of having racially charged negative views against both White Americans and Israelis. The media had severally played a clip of the minister making the racially charged comments while Obama was a member of his church thus questioning the racial views of the latter. The speech was aimed at the media and voters in the US who wanted the Senator to confirm his views on race.
The speech sought to address the nation regarding the affiliation of the Senator. In this aspect, Obama persuades the nation that he is not a racist or anti-Israeli even if he did attend such Reverent Wright’s sermons. Next, the speech sought to persuade Americans of both races to tackle the race question that had been an issue in America since the colonial times and which, for more than 200 years since the Constitution asserted the equality of all the people, was still a problem in the US.
A good orator will accomplish ethos at several levels. In the speech, Obama sought to do that through the presentation of facts in a manner that was both appealing and persuasive. To do this, he used historical analogies, exploring his family and its history on his side and his wife’s. This gives credibility to his speech and cogency in his communication. To establish his credibility in regard to race, Obama notes his genetic makeup by stating that he is the son of a black Kenyan man, and a white Kansas woman, and that his wife has both the blood of slaves and a slave owner. He then assets that he has close relatives, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, “of every race and who are scattered across three continents” (Obama). This statement confirms that the speaker is qualified to talk about race.
This speech was a made in a period when elections the public attention in the US. Americans were about to vote in the elections in which the first major party candidate was a person of color. This person was Barack Obama. Thus, this speech was not just a speech on the racism in the US but also an election cycle speech. Thus, to identify with the majority of voters, Obama said “we the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” This is a reference to the US Constitution and the nation making process. This establishes his ethos in regard to the Constitution. It also increases the speaker’s credibility as he is seen to admit that while the founding fathers formed a union, it is the current generations of Americans who will make it perfect.
Obama then states that the sensationalist media is always looking for evidence that America is still racially polarized. This, he notes, is not just between the historically antagonist races in the US (white and black, due to, among others, slavery and racism) but also between the black and brown people in the US as well (Obama para. 7). This establishes the senator’s credibility while destroys that of the media in one swoop through the use of the concept of opposing ideas.
For a person seeking a national leadership position, he/she has to be sufficiently intellectual. Voters will more generally trust a person who has a good level of education (Childers 36). In the speech, Obama also sought to establish his educational and intellectual ethos. In this regards, he noted in paragraph 6 that he “had gone to some of the best schools in America” (Obama). This assertion was meant to make the audience believe that he was not just a person who had an idea of what he was talking about; he was a brilliant American able to pass his message of racial equality along.
Moreover, the then Senator used ethos to demonstrate his knowledge of America’s history and concerns that pervade not just the US, but also the contemporary world. In the 24th paragraph, the president noted the slavery and the Jim Crow laws (Obama). He proceeded mentioning that segregation is evident in America’s religious life by saying that “the most segregated hour…occurs on Sunday morning” (Obama). This not only establishes the speaker’s ethos in regard to the history and social issues that pervade the nation, but also shows that he is qualified to respond to the issue of racism in a church he used to attend as he had been accused by his detractors. In this regard, Obama noted that black and white resentments do not always come out in “polite company” but sometimes they are apparent in ways that are destructive such as racism. This way, he addressed the issue of Jeremiah Wright’s apparently racist sermons.
In America, the faith of political leaders is usually an important aspect of the political process. That is why, lastly, Obama establishes his religious ethos by mentioning his Christian faith and using Biblical allusions (para 13-16). These not only helped him identify with majority of the population but also gave him a credibility to speak on matters to do with religion as it is one of the main issues of the speech.
In regard to pathos, the senator used emotional appeals to get his audience understand his message (Griffith 53). This way, Obama sought to alter the thoughts of his audience through his story telling techniques. He noted that his grandfather went through the Great Depression (Obama para 6). This drew the audience to sympathize with the speaker. To evoke feelings of patriotism and self-sacrifice, Obama noted that his grandfather served in the Second World War even after going through the Depression.
Furthermore, the Senator used pathos by continuously repeating the word “we.” He started his speech by saying “we the people” (Obama). The speaker also told the audience that “we cannot solve the challenges unless we do it together” (Obam). This appeals to the audience by co-opting them in his journey to the White House.
Logos was extensively used by the Senator. In the first place, his speech appealed in the context of logos as he has organized it in a way that his main arguments were not just clear, they were objective. He noted that the frustration of blacks from many years of slavery and racism is still present, while also acknowledging the fears of whites. This is objectivity, which is an important part of logos. This way, both blacks and whites identify with his assessment of the race issue.
In logos, inductive reasoning is also a prominent feature. An instance of this occurred in paragraph 8 of the speech. Obama noted that he is the son of a Kenyan and a Kansas woman. He has a Second World War veteran as a grandfather while his grandmother worked in a bomber factory while his grandfather was away fighting. Moreover, he has close relatives of several races across three continents. Despite such family history, Obama was a US Senator and was on course to being the President. The conclusion was that “in no other country on Earth” is his story even possible (Obama).
The speaker also used deductive reasoning in his speech. He noted that Reverent Wright served in the US as a marine, that Obama had never heard the Reverent utter a single racist word, and that Wright treats the whites with whom he interacts with courtesy. The speech noted, moreover, that Obama’s own grandmother, who raised the senator, sometimes made statements with racial undertones that would make Obama “cringe” in spite of the fact that the grandmother loved him. Deductively, this is meant to imply that Wright, in spite of his racially charged summons, is not exceptionally bad personality but just a product of the 1960s America.
In any speech, the timing is usually one of the ways of evaluating its effectualness. A good speech that has used the correct balance of ethos, pathos and logos and is delivered in the wrong place and at the wrong time is the ineffectual (Sparks). In Greek, this is known as kairos and it is enunciated in Aristotle’s The Audience. Kairos also concerns the exigency of the speech. In this instance, one has to take into account the environment both in physical and chronological aspects of the speech. In this example, Obama delivered the speech in Philadelphia, near the place where the constitution that established the United States was signed. Thus, his call of “we the people…”rings not only true, but feels authentic. In addition, the speech was delivered when he was running for the democratic nomination for the US President; he had been the first person of color to have a real chance of becoming the US president. In this instance, he noted that the exercise of electing him should not be an “affirmative action” by “wide eyed” liberals but should be seen as an idea the time of which has come so that all the Americans can take a part in solving the nation’s problems, mainly the race issue.
Effectiveness of the Speech and Its Presentation
The time that has passed after the speech allows one judging if the speech was effective or not. First of all, the speaker went on to become the democratic presidential nominee and won a presidency twice. The comments of his former pastor had the potential to destabilize his campaigns. However, after dealing with the issue in this speech, Obama went on to win, and later won a second term. Thus, one can say that he the speech was a successful exercise.
However, as to the long-term effects of his speech in other regards other than his campaign, Obama does not seem to have succeeded. The race issue seems to have reared its ugly head again during this nomination cycle, and seems like it will be a major issue in the elections. Thus, while the speech mollified both sides of the racial problem for particular time, Americans will not remember it as the great speech that eased racial issues in the US. The aspect of relations between races continues to be a topic that is talked about in this election cycle with some of the candidates calling some groups of the American people drug peddlers, rapists and terrorists.
Conclusion
The paper sought to use the Aristotelian method to analyze Barack Obama’s speech “A More Perfect Union.” The method has three main premises: ethos, pathos and logos. Since a speech also depends on the timing and delivery, the analysis also included the element of kairos. Taken as whole, the speech was successful in all the four aspects. Obama managed to establish his ethos: genetic, political and spiritual that allowed him to talk about the issue at hand. He kept pathos, the appeal to emotion, minimal in his speech which is the hallmark of a good speech. Additionally, “A More Perfect Union” was logical, consistent, and used both inductive and deductive arguments and thus it is apparent that it had the logos. The timing of the speech was also good and thus kairos was evident in the speech. However, while it was effective in the short-term, its effect in the long-term is not so apparent.