Malcolm X appeals to pathos extensively throughout his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet". His passionate voice and charisma incites an emotional response making the audience more likely to agree with him. He invokes a sense of exigence early in the speech stating "1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed". This creates anxiety and urgency in the audience making them more likely to act. He spends much of the speech discussing the injustices committed against African-Americans to provoke the audience and make them more receptive to his radical idea presented in the speech title to turn to violence if necessary. Malcolm uses repetition throughout the speech to emphasize and reinforce his argument and imprint it on the audience. One example of this repetition is his use of the title "the ballot or the bullet" which he ends the speech with. By repeating this phrase Malcolm emphasizes the need for action and makes violence seem like a more reasonable solution by continually bringing it up. He repeats this phrase one final time at the end of the speech in order to leave the audience with the idea they need to take action as they move on after listening to the speech. He appeals to a larger audience by presenting his argument without siding with either democrats or republicans. Throughout the speech Malcolm uses emotion and passion to reinforce his call for immediate action.
-Chris Burns
Awesome analysis! I really liked how you analyzed Malcolm X's use of repetition and how it helped his overall goal to appeal to the emotional attitude of the audience. However, I think it would be effective to your overall analysis if you worked on varying the sentence structure of your analysis. You seem to begin many of your sentences with he or his. Varying your sentence structure would allow you to fix your flow and make it more smooth for the reader and allow them to receive the message of your analysis more clearly. Other than that you did great.
ReplyDelete-Jason Recht
I also thoroughly enjoyed your analysis of Malcolm X's use of repetition. To add to that I think you could talk about the mere exposure effect. The more an audience is exposed to an idea the more likely the crowd will develop a preference for that ideology. Also great use of the quote as evidence of Malcolm X creating exigence.
ReplyDeleteI think you made a great point by analyzing how X delivered this speech. His call to action would mean nothing if he hadn't delivered it with urgency and passion. His appeals to pathos were strong as you mentioned, but they would have been much less effective if he had delivered them poorly.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you brought up how Malcolm X invokes a sense of exigence in his audience and then providing a specific example. Your analysis seems well thought out and nicely put together. My group is also doing a blog on the civil rights movement, however our texts are songs from the sixties and a song from today about the movement; but it was interesting to see other texts such as the "I have a dream" speech and Malcolm X's "ballot for the bullet". Nice job.
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I completely agree with your analysis of Malcolm X's speech in the fact that X was sending a message when he stated that "1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed" igniting a sense of urgency in the American government to radically change the system and establish equal rights for people of color. He is using pathos in his speech to urge the American government, Democrats and Republicans alike to make a change in the way people of color are treated or as is implied in his speech title there will be the bullet signifying violence. Malcolm X is known for his use of diction and verbatim as you clearly analyzed and you did a good job of accenting the ideologies and audience he was addressing with this emotional speech.
ReplyDelete-Ikenna Mba
I also thought this was well thought out--I would have liked to see some additional examples. You mention repetition--it would help the reader to see what X chose to repeat for an appeal to pathos!
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The tone of the speaker is very important when giving a speech because it helps determine how the audience perceives the message. I agree with you that Malcom X's tone really helped inspire his audience to want to make a change. Much like JFK's Moon Shot speech to Congress, they both use the past and their losses to help inspire and get their directed audience to make a change. What other literary devices do you believe are important when trying to persuade an audience and appeal to their pathos?
ReplyDelete-Zachary Karetsky
Tone and voice are very effective tools to use when appealing to pathos especially in speech because they are infectious. Diction is another important device to use because the words a speaker chooses have specific connotations and must be carefully chosen to get the message and feeling desired across to the audience.
DeleteYou did a great job analyzing how his call to action affects the audience. I like how you provided different examples of how he appeals to pathos. I feel as though you could've provided an example of the repetition. Otherwise, this is very well written.
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