President John F Kennedys inaugural address is a political speech and moment that to

this day is held with high regard for its rhetoric. With tensions across the nation over civil rights
and across the world over the cold war, everyone was watching to see what Kennedy would
say. Knowing this Kennedy enlisted the help of others to study previous successful speeches
and spent every spare moment of his time perfecting his speech. In one rumored report he even
took time at breakfast that very morning to look over and make final revisions to his speech. The
end result payed off with a widely positive reception of his speech and remains a speech that
both sides of the United States political spectrum can look back on positively. One rhetorical
device that he uses often and masterfully throughout his speech is that of Chiasmus. As
defined by Wikipedia (Chiasmus, n. d.) Chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more
clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger
point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. This structure of speech is used sparsely
Kennedys inaugural speech yet greatly influenced perception of his speech. One might ask,
why did Kennedy chose to use this figure of speech and what final effect it had on perception of
his speech?

One example of chiasmus in Kennedys speech is as follows My fellow citizens of the

world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of
man (para. 25). Kennedy makes a call to the world to advance the betterment of freedom
across the globe. He uses chiasmus to make this call in order to present a dichotomy. He
frames the proposition so that one is either asking what America will do for them or they are
asking how they can together work towards freedom. Its obvious which choice Kennedy feels is
better and by using chiasmus he makes a powerful rhetorical statement. Rather than telling the
world to simply work with America towards freedom he presents the inferior option of begging
america. He means to make the listener feel empowered in their own state of working towards
freedom for the world. And though the world may not be his true audience, at least not enemies
of america, to the american people Kennedy means to make clear what his attitude to people of
other nations is.

Another example of chiasmus in Kennedys (n. d.) speech is the most remembered and
famous line ...my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you
can do for your country (para. 26). This was meant in a very similar way as the statement
above and the parallelism of putting these two lines right next to each others adds even another
layer of persuasiveness. He sets up another dichotomy of two types of people, people in
america and people in the rest of the world. This is meant to simplify the complex nature of the
world in order to make the goals seem more achievable. Kennedy's call for the american people
to ask what they can do for their country prefaced by a call to not ask what the country can do
for them. He makes this statement in order to create a sense of union and camaraderie among
the people of the nation as well, to work towards a common goal and to remove barriers
between groups.

Kennedy was a master of rhetoric and this one small device used only a few times in his
speech even remained as a quote still referenced today by American politicians and a few
across the world. He created a piece of rhetoric and such a historic speech that its power in
persuasiveness and ease of understanding is still referenced treated with a reverence and
respect. Through his use of the one rhetorical element of chiasmus, the dichotomies created
were used to create a clear choice and a clear option for the world.
 References

Kennedy, J. F. (n. d.). Inaugural address. Retrieved from

https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BqXIEM9F4024ntFl7SVAjA.aspx
Chiasmus. (n. d.). Retrieved June 13, 2017 from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus