Blog Entry #2

Barrack Obama’s speech, “The Connection Between Faith and Politics” contains various rhetorical strategies used to persuade and/or sway the audience.  Barrack Obama’s use of diction adds to the rhetorical appeal of ethos, further validating him as a reliable source of information, as he is an very important figure in America.  He starts by utilizing the strategy of an anecdote, “I want to give you an example that I think illustrates this fact”.  He tells the story of his 2004 General Senate Election verses Alan Keyes.  Alan discriminated against Obama’s opposing religious views, which set up for the point of Obama’s entire speech.  Obama also utilizes the rhetorical strategy of pathos, as he tells the story of Alan Keyes claiming, “Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."  This makes people feel Obama’s frustration towards the issue.  He also uses the strategy of logos by inputting statistics, “90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.” This further validates his point of majority of America being religious.  Obama also uses the strategy of transition words to make the speech run smoothly.  Although many strategies are utilized the main ones are ethos, logos, and pathos, which make his speech very persuasive and swaying.