Ive Been To The Mountaintop Analysis

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The medium, oral form, has been used effectively to deliver a message of resistance that motivates and draws an emotional connection from the target audience. This analysis will focus on how the flexibility of orality can be used to create a link between the communicating parties. It will also draw attention to speech as a powerful means of communication and dominance. The effectuality of the message by using variations in tone or intensity of the voice, how they talk with fervor and how the audience reacts to this will be examined. Oral form of resistance narrative have been used by activists such as Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King JR., Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X to inspire their audience and fight for an ideal they strongly …show more content…
In Martin Luther King’s Speech, I’ve Been To The Mountaintop, which was his last speech that was given, he protests against low pay and maltreatment by white supervisors towards the black sanitation workers. He uses disparity in his tone by going high and low at different points during the speech. This elicits a response from the audience in agreement to what he is saying. Sometimes it is a low response which may mean that they hear what he has to say or a high response which means that they strongly agree with what he is saying. This is very important because it shows that the speaker is also moved by what he is saying, which in turn, makes an impression on the audience. In Sojourner Truth’s speech, Ain’t I A Woman, she describes how she faced prejudices as a black person and a woman. She also speaks about the inequalities that women and blacks faced during that period in America and fights for the equality of women arguing that women should have the same rights as men. The intensity of her voice reveals magnitude of her emotion which would have been difficult to convey any other way. The flexibility of orality was evident due to the fact that the speech was impromptu. Her presence is a significant part of this because the audience gets to feel the same emotion that they can perceive in her voice. The tonal quality of the activist cannot be replicated in written form due to the lack of the same stimulation that a reader can conjure. A student reading the speech will not be as interested as when they hear it in oral form because the tonal quality of the speaker makes a huge difference in the way that the speech is

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