Rhetorical Analysis Paper
Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream

According to Aristotle, there are three ways for a speaker to persuade his audience: ethos, logos, and pathos ("American rhetoric: Aristotle's rhetoric - selected moments," n.d.). Aristotle noted that a speech should “engage both the rational and non-rational elements of the listener's soul” (Wardy, 1996, p. 63). The speaker must have credibility with their audience and appear fair, open-minded, honest, and knowledgeable (ethos). He/she must also have logical appeal with strong, valid arguments based on facts and, perhaps, with personal experience and observations (logos). And, finally, the speaker must emotionally appeal to the audience and create a personal connection to draw and hold their attention (pathos). Of the three, Aristotle believed that ideally arguments should be made with reason, or logic, alone (McKay & McKay, 2010). However, it is often a speaker’s emotional appeal that creates the personal connection, as well as captivates and motivates the audience … and few have done that better than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you say the words “I have a dream”, Americans from age 18 to 80 immediately think of Martin Luther King Jr. They may not know the words achieved notoriety from a speech given at an equal rights march on Washington, DC in August 1963. They may not know that 250,000 blacks gathered at the National Mall to demand "jobs and freedom" (Hampson, 2013). Additionally, they may not realize that millions more listened to it on radio and watched it on television (Murray, n.d.). But those four words that rang of truth, preached by a leader of the civil rights movement to an impassioned crowd of thousands upon thousands, were immortalized that day on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because of the King’s ability to combine Aristotle’s ethos, logos and pathos into