Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Frederick Douglass
Birth of Logos
Logos = One’s reasoned argument
Exigence = The drive to speak
Purpose
Audience
Logos
Rhetoric
Definition: the art of using words in speaking (or
writing) to advance the author’s Logos so as to
persuade or influence others
Example:
– “…after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced
to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the
warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks
from her, and horrid oaths from him) came
dripping to the floor” (5).
Content-Centered: Ethos
Appeal to common values and community expectations.
Ethos reflects…
– Ethical values and/or the character or spirit of a culture
– shared assumptions of a people
– universal components of the human experience
Ex:
– “I would sometimes say to them [the white boys who
helped Douglass learn to read], I wish I could be as
free as they would be when they got to be men. ‘You
will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am
a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free
as you have?’ ” (23).
Content-Centered: Irony
A contrast between what is expected to
happen and what actually happens
Example:
– “I nerved myself up again, and started on my
way, through bogs, brier, barefoot and
bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at
nearly every step…” (40).
Form-Embedded: Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds within a
sentence or across several sentences
Example:
– “The longest days were too short for him and
the shortest nights were too long for him”
(38).
Form-Embedded: Apostrophe
When a speaker addresses an absent person, an
abstract quality, or something non-human as if it
were present and capable of responding
Example:
– “My thoughts would compel utterance; and
there, with no audience but the Almighty, I
would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my
rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving
multitude of ship: -- ‘You are loosed from your
moorings, and are free…’ ” (38).
Form-Embedded: Allusion
A brief (usually indirect) reference to a
person, place, or event, or to another
literary work or passage
Example:
– “In coming to a fixed determination to run
away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when
he resolved upon liberty or death” (51).
– Patrick Henry: “I know not what course others
may take; but as for me, give me liberty or
give me death!” -from Speech in the Virginia Convention
Form-Embedded: Hyperbole
To utilize exaggerated language to call
attention to the situation and/or to
emphasize emotion
Examples: “I haven’t seen you in a
century!” “That necklace must have cost
you your life’s savings!”
Form-Embedded: Oxymoron