Young Speech

Although I didn’t attend this speech, due to another grad class, I have listened to the responses to the speech from others in the class and tried to understand what took place as best as I could. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like Young establishes credibility pretty well with his audience (ethos), especially by having been an ambassador for the UN and mayor of Atlanta. By having held high political positions and having experienced much while abroad, much of the audience automatically assumes this speaker is probably knowledgeable about what he is speaking about. As we’ve read, a rhetorician is most persuasive in his speech when he speaks out at a time of urgency. Though the moment of urgency isn’t as pronounced as it was in the letter that MLK wrote while in jail, it is still made apparent that he thinks we are living in a time of crisis. Though we’ve made accomplishments from where we started out in the past, in order to achieve a greater peace, we need to keep moving forward. He reminds us that the time is urgent with references such as to the war in Iraq, using logic (logos) to convince the audience of the desperate state we are in. As I heard people discussing the speech, the idea that Young really took his audience into consideration when speaking was strongly brought to my attention. Poulakos talks about the idea of to prepon, really knowing and addressing your audience appropriately. Young does this well through using stories, such as the dentist one (so I’ve heard) that college students can relate to. I also noted that people were saying Young treated the topic of President Bush with little bias involved. He took the fact that much of his audience probably voted for President Bush into consideration when forming his speech. That was very intelligent, due to the fact that he probably would have lost much of his audience if he went on a “Bush-bashing” tirade. Again, I did not personally see the speech, but from what I’ve heard, it sound like he was a pretty decent speaker and I probably would have liked it better than being in my classJ