Ain't I a Woman speech was given by Sojourner Truth in 1851 at a Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Truth gave her speech to set forth her views …show more content…
Truth, like many other African Americans in the 1800’s, was born a slave. She was beaten and mistreated. Truth uses her upbringing as a slave in her speech by using informal words such as, "Honey" along with illiterate phrases such as, "Ain't I a woman?" and, “But what’s all this here talking about?” The causal language of her speech shows that Truth is a “plain folk.” Her usage of plain folk language helped link other slave members in the audience to Truth’s point of view. Although this technique is very powerful, there are many others to catch the attention of the audience such as rhetoric. In MLK’s I Have a Dream speech contained many rhetorical lines. This speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963 called for an end to racism in the United States. MLK achieved getting his message across about equality through rhetorically speaking about the …show more content…
November 19th, 1863 was a day to remember, for on that day Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address speech to millions of people. Although it was a short speech, it was an unforgettable one. The repetition of starting three sentences in a row with, “We cannot…” catches the audiences’ attention and allows them to remember Lincoln’s ideas, projected in his speech, easier. Through the usage of anaphora, it allows many authors to add emphasis and show determination about creating equality as well as making the passage easier to remember. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address speech is not the only very memorable speech to use anaphora. Throughout MLK’s legendary speech, I Have a Dream, began with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863, King states that, "One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free”. Martin used this anaphora of, “One hundred years later…” for four sentences in a row to re-catch the audience every sentence and pull them into realization that the Negros still do not have equality. The moment King used his anaphora he fell into a category filled with some of the most successful speeches ever, because it created an opportunity for the audience to remember his I Have a Dream speech very