Rhetorical Analysis Of President Kennedy's Moon Speech

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Analysis of President Kennedy’s moon speech The moon speech was given by President Kennedy on the 25th of May 1961. During the speech, President Kennedy announced the national goal which was landing on the moon and returning to Earth safely. He also indicated that this goal would be one of the most difficulty and impressive in the history of exploring the space. Landing on the moon was also one of the most remarkable events of mankind. President Kennedy used ethos and pathos effectively in the speech, which made the speech one of the greatest speech in the history. A couple of months before the speech, The Soviet Union sent the first man to the space. At that time, Soviet Union was likely to have more advantages in space competition between …show more content…
The audience was the Congress since the speech was given to the congress directly. The message was what the President Kennedy said in the speech, which was that America was aiming a brand new goal that was landing on the moon. To make the speech more effective, ethos and pathos were using as rhetorical appeals in this speech. Ethos was usually about building credibility to the audience. In this case, the credibility was been building by trustworthy person who was the President of America. To the audience, the president Kennedy was definitely one of the trustworthy person in the world. Therefore, it made the speech more reliable and trustable as the speech was given by the President of America. The using of ethos is pretty effective to the audience, and it made people to believe that America was taking the space program seriously. What if the same information was given by someone on the street instead of President Kennedy? Would people believe that? I do not think so because the president of America was the key to make the speech to be believable. Therefore, President Kennedy as the communicator of the speech made the believable by using the ethos. Besides, pathos was also used in the speech. Pathos is an appeal to the emotion. In general, this speech makes the audience feel proud of the nation since the moon landing program was announced during the speech. In the speech, President Kennedy was using confident tone when he announced the new space program. In the speech, President Kennedy used the phrase “I believe” in the very beginning of the speech. The word “believe” expressed the confidences of President Kennedy and NASA about landing on the moon. It also indicated that America was able to achieve the new goal with the support of Congress. What’s more, the confident tone also showed that President Kennedy felt honor to be an American and the president of

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