Rhetorical Strategies In Denzel Washington

In order to deliver a successful speech, there are countless qualities that must be present to reach the emotion and logic of the crowd. Through the use of rhetorical strategies and by having ethics, a speaker or an author can connect with their audience; getting them involved with their writing. In May of 2011, a man by the name of Denzel Washington used multiple rhetorical strategies to deliver a graduation speech at the University of Pennsylvania. While revealing all of the difficult times that he had gone through while in college and figuring out what he wanted to pursue as a career, he inspired millions of people, changing the world. Now, with millions of fans, Washington is a famous actor that has starred in numerous movies such as Courage …show more content…
Writers who have their own voice are able to have a profound effect on the world. The voice of an author’s writing contributes to their ethics, which shows that they have knowledge on the topic and that they aren’t making information up. If a writer or speaker has ethics, they can get their audience to become involved and connect with them. The author Elbow agrees with this statement, “The habit of compulsive, premature editing doesn’t just make writing hard. It also makes writing dead. Your voice is damped out by all the interruptions, changes, and hesitations between the consciousness and the page.” “I don’t know how it works, but this voice is the force that will make a reader listen to you.” Washington was able to leave a profound effect upon the people he spoke to because of the way he was able to use his voice to make people listen to him. He was able to change the way the 2011 graduates were thinking when he described his college and life experience. The way that Washington spoke helped to make the graduates feel less intimidated about their future, which has left a great impact on them because it made them realize that sometimes things don’t always go as …show more content…
Murray states that “When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done --- and their teachers too often agree… When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin.” “As readers read and reread, write and rewrite, they move closer and closer to the page until they are doing line-by-line editing, writers read their own pages with infinite care” Murray shows that it’s important to edit all of your writing, but Elbow says that editing will diminish your voice. Even though these writers disagree, they are still able to produce a piece of writing that leaves an impact on those who read it, just in the same way that the people were impacted when they listened to Washington’s