Speech
Norman Podhoretz attempts to answer the controversial question, "Is America Exceptional?" In a persuasive speech delivered on October of 2012. The speech has some core strengths that make it generally effective. Podhoretz appeals to his audience's emotions, establishes his credibility as a speaker, uses some forms of logical reasoning, and also cites specific facts and data. However, there are clearly some problems with "Is America Exceptional?" In The Art of Public Speaking, Stephen Lucas outlines some of the parameters that characterize an effective persuasive speech. Among those parameters is the absence of logical fallacies. Unfortunately, Podhoretz's speech is filled with logical fallacies that make "Is America Exceptional?" A speech that only has emotional appeals without having a logical backbone.
Podhoretz relies heavily on emotional appeals in "Is America Exceptional?" The speech starts with the line, "Once upon a time," like a fairy tale. Fairy tales are emotionally charged stories that appeal to the audience's childhood hopes and dreams. By using a fairy tale opener, Podhoretz not only appeals to childhood hopes and dreams, he also asks the audience to suspend disbelief, as when one hears a fairy tale. The phrase "once upon a time" is about the "good old days," too. The idea of there being a sort of gilded age when America was great has emotional substance for the audience. Likewise, the use of a fairy tale beginning presumes that the American Dream...
Podhoretz establishes rapport with the audience by appealing to their childhood dreams, and by appealing to their belief in the American Dream. Therefore, the first sentence of the speech uses emotional appeals and simultaneously establishes strong rapport with the audience.
Another way Podhoretz uses emotional appeals is by drawing from the Declaration of Independence. The statement related to the "self-evident truth" that "all men are created equal" is one that is repeated to American school children since they are old enough to understand what the words mean, and in many cases, even before that. The Declaration of Independence is the heart and soul of the American cultural identity, which the speaker shares with the audience. This is an appeal to tradition, as the speaker knows how important tradition is to the underlying subject of what it means to be an American. Podhoretz fuses pathos, ethos, and logos by referencing the Declaration of Independence. As Lucas points out, it is important to use specific quotes and facts rather than generalizations.
Unfortunately, the strong emotional appeals that Podhoretz uses in "Is America Exceptional?" become the greatest weakness of the speech. Podhoretz also loses credibility by turning the pathos of the speech into an ad hominem diatribe against Americans who believe that there is too much income disparity in the nation; against Americans who believe that health care is a basic human rights;…
