Persuasive Communication

In class we discussed MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In this letter MLK used ethos (appeal to the speaker), logos (appeal to logic), and pathos (appeal to emotion) very well to get his point across. I feel as if he proved his credibility by stating all types of information. He stated in a clear way, his purpose for writing the letter. I would have to say that his letter was much more persuasive than the Army speakers we had in class.

The Army speakers did a good job of telling us how to write and speak persuasively, but I was a little disappointed that they did not do their persuasive talk about getting people to join the Army. I think that the class would have gained a little more insight to persuasive communication if they would have spoke that way themselves.

The piece of persuasive communication that I found to share is George Bush's speech on Hurricane Katrina. This article really stuck out to me, because Katrina hit New Orleans during my freshmen year in college. I had a girl that lived beside me, on my hall, that was from the New Orleans area and she had a very difficult time. On Thursday, September 15th,2005, the president addressed the nation about the recovery efforts taking place during that time. I believe he used logos when he said, "Congress has provided more than $60 billion in federal aid so far that has been used in part to help more than 500,000 evacuee families get emergency food.." I feel like this data along with many other statistics really proved to Americans that something was being done for the victims. He used pathos throughout the entire piece while talking about the compassion of our nation and discussing the amount of lives taken during that horrible disaster. He used appropriate language throughout the speech to get across to the nation his sincerity. Although this speech is not the best example of persuasive communication, we can definitely see his use of ethos, pathos, and logos to give the nation hope.

Of the 3 different pieces discussed in this blog, I feel as though MLK's Letter is much more persuasive than both the Army recruiters or Bush's Hurricane Katrina speech. MLK had a way of communicating that was/is so impressive and his letter will probably be looked at for years and years to come when discussing persuasive writing!

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169512,00.html