Rhetorical Analysis Of Malcolm X: The Ballot Or The Bullet Speech

The speaker, Malcolm X, is an extraordinary and significant human beings in the American history. He was born on May 19, 1925, and he was the fourth child out of eight children in his family. His real name was actually Malcolm Little; however, he thought that “Little” was not their family, and it was changed by some white people because of racism. So he decided to get rid of his last name and used letter “X” instead which means “unknown”. According to A&E Television Networks, Malcolm X is the leader of the Nation of Islam and he delivered many speeches about race pride and Black Nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s (Malcolm Little). One of his most important and significant speeches is “The Ballot or the Bullet” which was delivered on April 12, …show more content…
At the beginning of the speech, Malcolm X used humor and said “… and I see some enemies”. The audiences laughed which grabbed the attention of the audiences. He directly pointed out his purpose of the speech which was to talk about the ballot or the bullet in his introduction. He also used something like a slogan to encourage people. For example, “Today it’s time to stop singing and start swinging” was one thing that Malcolm said. He used rhetorical question in his speech to explain what was so good about the Black Nationalism in order to grab the attention of the audiences and pointed out the importance of the Black Nationalism. The speaker used some examples from other countries as well. Africans and Asians were getting their independence through nationalism or the philosophy of nationalism. According to the lecturer, Black Nationalism would free about twenty-two million African-Americans because of the same reason. The whole speech was full of logic. For example, he talked about the sit-down philosophy and the march in Washington D.C. The sit-down philosophy was a slippery slope philosophy. He used it so that he could encourage people to “stand” up and fight with their enemies. Malcolm X used a ton of examples to list what African-American people had be doing in the past and what they should do to solve the problem. In the speech, Malcolm X always used the “we” language which includes himself with all the audiences which made the speech more effective. For example, he said “We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat”. This would raised the credibility of the speaker which would help him to encourage more people. Mr. Malcolm mentioned that he was one of the twenty-two million of black victims, and he spoke as a victim for African-Americans. He was also honest that he said that he was not the kind of person who came to say what people like but try to