Martin Luther King, ‘I Have A Dream’, 28 August 1963

It is hard to go past The Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have A Dream’ speech of 28 August 1963 as one of the most memorable of all time.

It is probably the most often quoted by our members, and by people in general.

Great speeches are often remembered for either the passion of their delivery or the brilliance of their rhetoric. Great speeches like this one, the Gettysberg Address and Gough’s ‘Well May They Say’ speech on his dismissal achieve both.

‘I Have A Dream’ delivered a razor-sharp message of four words repeated at an almost resonant frequency, like a series of waves, each one reinforcing the one before.

The balance and metre of the main text remains one of the most beautiful examples of written English in political history, and that is what makes it all the more surprising. We often teach that the way we write should be different from the way we speak, that overly formal writing that works on paper will actually reduce the effectiveness of a speech that is meant to stir a live audience. Yet the power of the Reverend’s visual imagery and the potency of its implications carried the message with full force even to his partially literate audience.

The speech remains a monument to what can be achieved when a human being with a clear belief decides to move humanity with nothing more than the spoken word.

– Gary Wilson, former director of Toastmasters International

Listen to the first few minutes of this persuasive speech presented by Severn Suzuki at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992:

This example:

– introduces the topic
– highlights some of the associated issues
– captures the reader’s interest
– tells us why the topic is important

In fact, this speech did these things so successfully that Severn was heralded as, ‘the girl who silenced the world for five minutes’.

A great introduction should use a range of persuasive devices, such as:

– Emotive language
– Expert appeal
– Metaphors and Similes
– Humour
– Contrast
– Rhetorical questions
– Repetition
– Rule of Three

Severn uses several these devices in the introduction to her speech. For example:

‘fighting for my future’, ‘starving children…whose cries go unheard’ (emotive language)
‘Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age?’ (contrast and rhetorical questions)
‘You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t know how to bring the salmon backup and a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct.’ (repetition and the Rule of Three)