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Rhetorical Analysis Of Carrie Chapman Catt's Commencement Speech

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The rhetorical essay has been a tradition in public speaking since Ancient Greece. Meant to persuade an audience to believe an idea or to embrace a way of thinking, public speakers have utilized this technique for centuries to inspire change in those who listen to it. Carrie Chapman Catt's commencement speech to the 1936 graduating class at Sweet Briar College is a speech that exemplifies the key devices and methods of persuasion in rhetoric, as well as inspiring her audience, a girls-only institution of higher learning, to work hard not only to improve their own lives, but to create a world greater than their own for generations to come. Carrie Chapman Catt delivered a highly effective commencement speech using the rhetorical devices logos, …show more content…

Catt's rhetorical use of logical reasoning also extended to moral arguments- specifically, laws that resulted in mothers teaching their children morals they did not believe personally. Her main example of this was the law that a wife must teacher her children the religion that her husband wanted their children to learn, even if it was not the religion she practiced. Succeeding this, she states what her audience is already thinking- how could someone expect a mother to raise her own children in a way that she does not want them to be raised? All of these logical appeals forced Catt's audience to question seriously how laws such as these could pass, let alone be enforced. Throughout her speech, the use of specific numbers and ratios were meant to show how far women have come in their struggle for equal rights. One of Catt's most powerful uses of numbers and ratios was after her explanation of the process that the government had to go through in order to bring equality to the sexes, stating that "one hundred and forty-seven laws had been required to right the wrongs" (Catt). By utilizing this strikingly large number to aid in her description of the multitude …show more content…

A large part of the pathos used is in the form of loaded language, which is used to make her audience understand the severity of the oppression women faced during the Women's Century. Throughout her address, Catt used the rhetorical device of emotional diction to continuously imprint upon the audience a mixed feeling; disgust toward the mistreatment the women of that time faced, and gratefulness for the change that suffrage leaders, like Carrie Chapman Catt herself, gave to the women that sat in the audience the day she gave her speech. The words 'suffered,' 'epithet,' and 'humiliating,' were strategically placed at points in Catt's essay to add emphasis to her many emotional appeals to her. Few instances of humor are used to make the tone of the speech less melancholic, in addition to providing examples of the different ways women during that time discovered loopholes and challenged the rigid rules and customs involving women. One anecdote that perfectly encompasses this strategy pertains to a woman who attended town meetings in place of her husband, and discovered that by starting her opinions with 'my husband thinks', she could bypass the social custom that women could not speak in public. Although this is not an overly humorous story, it does aid in alleviating

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