OPPapers.com

The Rhetorical Styles Of King

An Analysis of Effectiveness

Martin Luther King Jr. and Toni Morrison are two of the many great writers of the late twentieth century. Their styles follow rhetorical guidelines to create persuasive arguments and clear writing. To show how they accomplish this I will be comparing the rhetorical style used by King in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” with that of Morrison in “Friday on the Potomac.” Each of these works result from strong opinions surrounding the issue of racial equality in the United States, and each appeals to the desire of achieving that equality. In order to address a sensitive topic such as racism and achieve the desired results, the authors had to implement various methods of persuasion. While each author chooses different manners with which to accomplish this, each forms clear writing with convincing arguments. They achieve this clarity due to their understanding and use of ethos, pathos, and logos as the foundations for creating these arguments.
Before we can examine the writing on the basis of these three elements, we must first understand the meanings of each. They were conceptualized by Aristotle as the keys to persuading an audience. Ethos, directly translated, means “worthy of belief,” and deals with establishing credibility. Pathos involves “putting hearers…into the right frame of mind with regard to certain issues and the speakers persuasive intent” (Smith 83). Logos includes the arguments that are used to make a point, and involves the basis upon which the arguments were made. The use of these three elements in harmony with each other will produce a persuasive argument according to Aristotle. Being that he did “write the book on rhetoric,” I will be using the ideas of Aristotle as the blueprint for effective writing to which I will compare the works of King and Morrison.
First I will examine Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter which embodies all...