Rhetorical Analysis/Bush's Speech of 9/11/02

Rhetorical Analysis/Bush's Speech of 9/11/02

A 5 page essay that summarizes, discusses and analyzes the rhetorical strategies that President George W. Bush used in his speech of 9/11/02, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the country in 2001. The writer argues that the speech is grounded in the extreme emotions generated by the attacks of 9/11. Using this as a foundation, President Bush endeavors to stir up patriotic feeling, mixed with feelings of outrage and sorrow, against an enemy that is pictured as not like "the rest of us" who believe in the sanctity of life, but rather as people who are inhuman and evil. In so doing, he copies a strategy that has been employed by leaders in every war, in every century, because it is only by looking at one's enemy as "other" that people can bring themselves to attack fellow human beings. No additional sources cited.