On September 20, 2001, President George Bush addressed the Nation and the Congress, in the midst of the terror attacks upon America on September 11, 2001. The people of the United States needed support and direction on how they were going to deal with this hard to believe attack. The American people insisted that the President address the Nation after the attacks. Nine days later, the President did just that. Over the next several days, emotions ran high in the country. “Is it going to happen again?” “Am I safe to leave my home?” many wondered. Everywhere throughout the Nation, airlines stopped their service, the New York Stock Exchange was temporarily halted, and every TV station around the world was reporting on these horrendous attacks.
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He also needed to stomp out the fears running through the country and give a sense of pride and stability in the American people. The speech was very effective because of two components: the emotional state of the population, and the rhetorical persuasive techniques that Bush used, which swayed the people together and put them into collective action. In President George Bush’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, the President used ethos, pathos, and logos to come across to the people. He used logos to prove to our Nation that he can and will do something about the …show more content…
One device he used at the very beginning of his speech was anaphora. He says, “our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom..” The device was used to show a solemn tone. President Bush wants the people to know that even though the attacks were serious, he has everything under control. The climax at the beginning makes it clear how serious the attacks were because he says “our way of life, our very freedom” it shows that another country terrorized us and took away part of our freedom and especially our way of life. People’s families and friends are gone because of them. That is a way of our life. The next device he uses is imagery. “The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.” The imagery used makes the whole speech stronger. It shows how bad the attack actually was, and it gives the people who weren’t there a feel of what it was like to be there. This is important because people need to know what it was like there. If he would not have used words like that, people may not have thought it was as important as it actually was. He also uses antithesis in his speech. “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.” It is used so greatly because two opposite ideas are put together to achieve a
He also needed to stomp out the fears running through the country and give a sense of pride and stability in the American people. The speech was very effective because of two components: the emotional state of the population, and the rhetorical persuasive techniques that Bush used, which swayed the people together and put them into collective action. In President George Bush’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, the President used ethos, pathos, and logos to come across to the people. He used logos to prove to our Nation that he can and will do something about the …show more content…
One device he used at the very beginning of his speech was anaphora. He says, “our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom..” The device was used to show a solemn tone. President Bush wants the people to know that even though the attacks were serious, he has everything under control. The climax at the beginning makes it clear how serious the attacks were because he says “our way of life, our very freedom” it shows that another country terrorized us and took away part of our freedom and especially our way of life. People’s families and friends are gone because of them. That is a way of our life. The next device he uses is imagery. “The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.” The imagery used makes the whole speech stronger. It shows how bad the attack actually was, and it gives the people who weren’t there a feel of what it was like to be there. This is important because people need to know what it was like there. If he would not have used words like that, people may not have thought it was as important as it actually was. He also uses antithesis in his speech. “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.” It is used so greatly because two opposite ideas are put together to achieve a