Painting an image of the role emotion plays in human cognition, American thinker William James once said, "emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action." The correlation of emotion and action is applicable to rhetorical persuasion, for effective persuasion in contingent on the emotion of the audience. Aristotle's Rhetoric offers a complex theoretical framework, which delves into the nature of rhetoric. In order to distinguish rhetoric from forms of knowledge with a scientific approach, Aristotle instead defines rhetoric as an art aimed at persuasion through probability. Consequently, emotion is an intrinsic and essential variable in rhetorical persuasion.
[...] In the speech We Shall Overcome, Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress in March of 1965 shortly following events of racial injustice in Selma, Alabama, in an attempt to garner support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Morals were at low, results of the McCarthyism era, and further declined by the recent death of John F. Kennedy. Johnson used the structural variables advantageously. Through the use of analogies and metaphors, Lyndon B. Johnson personifies African-Americans as the sufferers of injustice, without calling attention the inflictors. [...]
[...] Universal law is the law of Nature.” [1378b] Universal laws establish “equity the sort of justice which goes beyond the written law.” [1374b] The emotion of pity is the result of sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreover to befall us soon.” [1386a] In We Shall Overcome, the emotion of pity is carefully targeted. We feel the emotion of pity, “whenever we are in the condition of remembering that similar misfortunes have happened to us or ours, or expecting them to happen in the future.” [1386a] Thus, an individual's ability to relate to another's circumstance is of significant consequence. [...]
[...] It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.” Additionally, he makes references to revered American historical texts, such as the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Patrick Henry's “Liberty or Death”. These references compare historical situations to the present, so precedent is established for the development of pity and consequently action. Precedent allows listeners to identify with African- Americans, and only then can pity be found. [...]
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