-Kelsey
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
McCarthy Speech
The other day we discussed the McCarthy speech, and during class I wanted to bring up the repetition of words throughout it. In the beginning of the speech he reuses the word "peace," (speak of peace, anticipate a long peace, hope for peace...) as we discussed in class we discussed "immoralism" and if you look at that one paragraph he uses it three times- twice in one sentence. Finally, another distinct word that he used frequently in the end of his speech was "traitorous." I think that he uses these words in particular because they have strong meanings attached to them and he wants the people listening to come out with these, if not anything else. Of course, he is going to repeat ideas throughout the speech, but I thought it was interesting to see how frequently the same words appeared.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I hadn't noticed the repetion of words before you mentioned that. That is definitely a good point since we recognized in class that the speech was meant to gather a large group of followers. By repeating those words, McCarthy tried to make the idea of following his lead sound more appealing. The words peace, traitorous, and immoralism all create an image of an opponent for which McCarthy's followers could join forces to exclude or destroy.
-Jen
Post a Comment