Response to Poulakos and MLK Jr. lettter

Poulakos stresses the importance of the Sophists place in defining what makes up rhetoric and how it came about. He emphasizes three main ideas that the rhetor must take into consideration if his speech is to be effective and persuasive. Kairos is the idea that the speech must be timed correctly. It is in the time of "urgency", the time of a crisis when feelings are at their strongest, that the speech will be most effective and people will value what they are listening to. To prepon is the idea that the speech being made is appropriate, when taking the audience into consideration. Knowing your audience, knowing how and when to "push their buttons", and knowing the words and ideas that will affect them the strongest is key to being persuasive. Possibility (to dynaton) is the last idea stressed. A rhetor has a purpose. He is trying to make the audience consider other ways that they could live. He tries to introduce new possibilities and alternatives to the choices being made in actuality. By introducing new ideas, the audience is forced to at least consider their world as it is and think about how it could be if changed. After reading about these ideas and looking at MLK Jr.'s letter, we can see MLK Jr. is a persuasive rhetor. He uses the three principals of timeliness, appropriateness, and possibility in his letter. We see he uses appropriate timing in the fact that he is writing in a state of urgency. He is in jail, recording his feelings and thoughts during the moment of crisis. The letter reads powerfully because the words were recorded when his feelings were probably the strongest. It is evident he knows how to appropriately address his audience, in that he is able to evoke sympathy from the reader by using examples of the pain he and others face everyday. I think he wisely chooses to acknowledge the audience as being "men of genuine good will" before he attempts to criticize them, but also gain their sympathy. Possibility is present throughout the entire letter. He never stops mentioning the way it could be if the readers would consider the situation from a different point of view. Justice and equality could happen, peace could be possible, if the situation was rectified. MLK Jr.'s letter is an excellent example of how the principals of rhetoric that we read about in Poulakos are used in a situation from real life.