For the rhetorical analysis paper, I am currently considering Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, “The duties of American Citizenship”, as my text to analyze. In this speech, Roosevelt discussed the obligations that every citizens should carry with them once they become an U.S. citizen. I chose this particular speech as my target to analyze because this topic is closely related to me since I have recently became a U.S. citizen. However, the primary factor that I chose this speech is because of the importance of the message that Roosevelt is trying to deliver. In the speech, he criticized that most citizens are being irresponsible and do not contribute to this country, but still enjoy the benefits that were granted to them by the government. More importantly, this issue became a lot more serious in the modern world. Since the revolutionary war happened hundreds of years ago, people have slowly forgotten that the rights we have are not granted but earned. For instance, most citizens do not vote nor give out opinions to government, but this should be part of the obligations that every citizen should carry with them.

Other than the fact that the message Roosevelt is try to deliver to the public, the way that the speech was written is also worth to analyze rhetorically. A good speech must utilize all logos, ethos, and pathos to build up a strong argument. In the case of “The duties of American Citizenship”, Roosevelt wrote the speech in respect to all components of rhetoric. He showed the appeal to logic by logical statements to make audience agree on what he was saying. He showed the appeal to credibility by using quotes from quotes from the fighter in the civil war. He also showed the appeal to emotions by provoking emotions and giving out stories that would make audience to resonate with. Other than the part of using these three types of appeals, Roosevelt used analogies in the speech to make his speech easier to understand.

LINK TO THE SPEECH:

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/theodore_roosevelt_duties.html

My name is Zhi Chen and I’m a freshman. I came from Queens, New York. I’m an immigrant from China, I moved to this country several years ago. My current major is astronomy/planetary science. I’m also planning on taking music as a minor but I have not decided yet. I started having interests in music because my roommate is a music major. I was fascinated by how many instruments that he has, including keyboard, guitar, ukulele, and etc. I was inspired by him and remember that I once had interest in playing guitar but I quit after I bought the guitar. And I recently decided to re-learn guitar. Other than playing guitar, I also like to play all sorts of games with my friends. My other hobbies include watching anime and movies.

In the aspect of my writing history, I have been asked to write every year by my teachers. This does not simply include writing class but every other type of courses. For example, writing emails, lab reports, and etc. I do like writing when I’m free to write down my ideas and my intended purposes, but I hate English writing. It is because the grammar and punctuation restriction. I still remembers time when I had such amazing ideas but they would just make my sentences too complicated. I was afraid that I would get points deducted because I’m probably going to make a grammar mistake. I definitely believe writing is ne of the most important “technology” that humans invented. Before writing was invented, people had to memorize everything in their head, but with this new innovative “technology” people are able to cheat and write them down and store them somewhere else. This works just like modern computers. However, I feel putting a strong restriction on grammars would just deviate the main purpose of writing.

  ( I love cats by the way )

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