Letter From Birmingham Jail Day 1

Letter From Birmingham Jail Pre-reading Considerations

All rhetoric is situational

Rhetoric – the art of persuasion; knowing all of the available means of persuasion; how to feature content

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?

2. When was it written?

3. Who wrote it?

4. For what audience was it intended?

Primary and secondary audiences

5. For what purpose was it written?

The three appeals (plus one)

Ethos, logos, pathos (and authorities)

Ethos – credibility. The good man speaking well.

Established by actions, reputation and words.

Pathos: appeal to emotions

Logos: Appeal to logic and reasoning.

Where do you see each at work?

Appeal to Authorities: (subset of Allusions)

Prominence of Allusions (how they help; who gets them and who doesn’t)

Sentence level devices –  Three Prominent moves by MLK

Antithesis, parallelism, alliteration

Oldies but goodies -  Metaphor, simile, repetition of words, personification

Structure of text

Classic Structure of a Persuasive Speech

1. paragraphs _______: introduction (exordium)

2. paragraphs _______: narrative or statement of fact (narratio)

3. paragraphs _______: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)

4. paragraphs _______: conclusion (peroratio)