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Rhetorical Strategies In Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass was unique among reformers for not only having powerful rhetorical skills and eloquent expression, but personal experience to aid in his calls for reform. Many other reformers did not have personal experience with the subjects of their speeches, so their ability to evoke pain and oppression was limited. Even among those who had experienced oppression, Frederick Douglass still had the most powerful voice. His speech for abolition blends poignant evocations of slave’s suffering, righteous indignation at such suffering, and appeals to audiences Christian sense of justice. Among all of the reformer’s speeches, his The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, had the most powerful and persuasive tone.
Dorothea Dix and Horace Mann both …show more content…
Anthony experienced oppression, their speeches are not as powerful as Frederick Douglass’s speech. The suffragists speeches, particularly the Declaration of Sentiments, have a uniform direct tone throughout. Douglass’s varies his tone throughout the piece and uses a multitude of rhetorical strategies. He employs the techniques of anaphora and irony, repeating phrases to highlight injustice. For example when describing the irony of the fourth of July to slaves, he states, “To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and …show more content…
However Frederick Douglass had the best ability to make an impact on his audience. David Walker, in Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, was militant, outraged at the inhumanities that black people in America suffered. He had every right to outraged, but the harshness of his tone, along with his description of the violent end of oppression would likely make a white audience nervous, and not help his reform movement. Sojourner Truth had raw emotion, but she didn’t have the powerful rhetorical techniques of Douglass. Douglass not only invoked deep sympathy for the plight of slaves, but his words placed the responsibility to fix the situation on the audience's shoulders. For example, he asks, “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant

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