Thursday, February 1, 2007

Persuasive texts and rhetoric online

I want to share some information. I was surfing the web in search for some good examples of persuasive texts and an interesting site popped up. It actually helped me with choosing the text. I am not sure whether any of you is acquainted with this site:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

It is a free online speech bank. There are such sections as Top 100 American Political Speeches of the 20th century, famous Movie Speeches. Most are both in text and media format. Far not all of them are of a persuasive kind, yet, in general, the site seems to represent the recent history of rhetoric fairly well. It also has materials on theory, including Aristotle.
I chose a political campaign speech from the movie “All The King’s Men” (1949). Because it is a movie i.e. a piece of fiction, it gives the persuasive political text in concentrated, exaggerated and probably even grotesque way. Yet there is a lot in it it analyze.

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