A Study Of English Political Speeches From The Perspective Of Western Classical Rhetoric

Political speech is a kind of oral language activity in which politicians illustrate their points of view on politics, their policies and opinions about some issue before the public. A memorable and contagious political oration can be persuasive and attention grabbing, arouse the feelings of audience, expound the speakers’stand and views, convince audience to accept their points of view and seek their support. Hence, wise statesmen or politicians know so well that political speech is a potent weapon by which they go to great length to pave the way for their own political struggle. In order to convince the public, they apply a heap of language skills in their addresses. Therefore, from linguistic perspective political address is an interesting and significant language phenomenon. In this thesis the author takes Martin Luther King’s speech I Have a Dream as a case study of political speech to illustrate the way rhetorical devices work in the address in order to create the desired emotional impact and persuade people and the government.Martin Luther King’s speech I Have a Dream, one of the most memorable political speeches in the past century, is regarded as exemplary. The use of a lot of rhetorical devices helps make abstract political concept more concrete and more easily accepted and contribute to the forcefulness of his message. His memorable speech agitates and impresses the audience so much that the listeners show agreement or sympathy for the speaker’s point of view or attitude.Totally, there are six chapters in this thesis. In the introductory chapter, the author introduces the background and importance of this study as well as the definition of political speech and its practical significance. In Chapter Two, literature review, the author firstly exams various concepts of rhetoric. The second section reviews previous studies on political speech. Then, the author patiently discusses the development history of western classical rhetoric, which stems from Ancient Greece. There are many defining masters, such as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. Plato famously outlines the differences between true and false rhetoric in a number of dialogues. Cicero reckons an orator needs to be knowledgeable about all areas of human life and culture. Aristotle is one of the greatest philosophers in ancient Greece, and he has made a great contribution to rhetoric. It is Aristotle who proposes three appeals of rhetoric which contain logos, pathos and ethos. To be simple, logical appeal stresses logic and cause an effect; emotional appeal emphasizes feelings; ethic appeal leans to creditability. Aristotle reckons that the only way to persuade is to comprehensively consider those three modes of appeals. Not merely three appeals fortify the theoretical foundation for relative researchers, but also pave the way for orators making better speeches.Chapter Five is the main body of the whole thesis. The author makes a rhetorical study on Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream in a penetrating and systematical way. The study is composed of three aspects. The first two aspects view from communicative rhetoric and aesthetic rhetoric, which keep tabs on various rhetorical devices. And the third explores the application of three persuasion appeals.After detailed research, the author draws conclusions as follows. As far as political speech is concerned, western classical rhetoric approach is a fantastic research perspective; with the help of rhetorical devices and three persuasion appeals, which are much easier for orators to affect the audience and achieve the goal of persuasion. However, this thesis is in scarcity of examples because the author only researches on I Have a Dream. The author hopes subsequent scholars keep a close eye on this with their utmost concentration.