Comprehensive Analysis of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech, delivered in 1963 during the March on Washington. The analysis begins with an overview of the speech's objective, which is to examine King's ability to captivate the audience and convey his message regarding civil and economic rights, specifically focusing on ending racism in the United States. The report delves into the historical context, referencing the Emancipation Proclamation and the ongoing struggle for equality. It dissects the speech's key arguments, including the gap between the American dream and reality, and highlights King's use of rhetorical devices and pivotal historical documents. Furthermore, the analysis examines the speech's impact on the civil rights movement and its enduring legacy, providing insights into King's methods of engaging and influencing the audience through his delivery and use of body language. The report also references supporting materials, including scholarly articles and online resources, to provide a well-rounded perspective on the speech's significance and its lasting impact on American history.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF SPEECH
ANALYSIS OF SPEECH
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ANALYSIS OF SPEECH
Table of Contents
Objective........................................................................................................................2
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Analysis of the speech....................................................................................................2
Conclusion......................................................................................................................3
Delivery impression.......................................................................................................4
References......................................................................................................................5

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Objective
The major objective of the report is to analyse the speech of Martin Luther King that
had been given by him in the year 1963. Different aspects of the speech and the ways by
which the speaker was able to draw attention of audience will also be discussed in the report
in detail. Major points of speech will also be analysed in the report in detail.
Introduction
“I have a Dream” was a speech that had been delivered by Martin Luther King who
was a civil rights activist of American origin. The speech was given by him during the March
on Washington that had taken place for Jobs and Freedom. The major topic of the speech was
based on the economic and civil rights that are related to the end of racism in the US. The
audience included more than 250,000 supporters of civil rights and the speech proved to be a
defining moment of the civil rights based movement that had taken place (Youtube.com
2019). The speaker was able to draw in audience with the help of his ability to inform them
about the topic and providing knowledge about their benefits as well. The credibility of
speaker was mainly related to the position held by him in the civil rights organization. The
major points and purpose of the speech had also been effectively identified by speaker in
order to influence the audience in a huge manner (Youtube.com 2019).
Analysis of the speech
The speech given by Martin Luther King is also considered to be quite iconic in the
history of America. The speaker had begun the speech with reference to Emancipation
Proclamation that freed more than millions of slaves in the year 1863. However, he also
mentioned that the race has not been able to gain freedom even after 100 years of the
previous movement that had taken place. King had been quite precise in the ways by which
he had described his dream of equality and freedom in the country. Although the speech was

3ANALYSIS OF SPEECH
considered to be based on a protest that had been raised against inequality in the United
States the speaker had taken care in order to keep the audience calm (Chorowski et al., 2015).
The speech had also been able to discuss the gap that exists between the American
dream and the reality related to levels of quality in the country. The “I Have a Dream” speech
also has many different versions that have an impact on the audience at different points in
time. The transitions that had been made by Martin Luther King in the speech were quite
clear and the message had been able to reach the audience in an effective manner as well. The
focus of this speech was also quite clear and the speaker gained immense levels of success in
influencing the audience in an effective manner as well (Cone, 2018).
The arguments were well supported by the examples that had been provided by the
speaker from previous incidents. The speech had been able to invoke many pivotal
documents in the American history that included, the Emancipation Proclamation, the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States as well. King aims at
urging the audience with the use of the line “Now is the time” for more than six times. Major
lines that have been quoted from his speech include “One hundred years later”, “Let freedom
ring”, “We can never be satisfied”, “free at last” (Herbert, 2016).
Conclusion
The speaker had signalled ending of his speech and aimed at telling the audience
about the dream that he had been talking about. The ending can be considered to be concise
in nature and had played a major role in proper reinforcement of the purpose that had been
developed at the start of the speech. King had started preaching the points that had been
raised by him in the speech immediately after he had completed speaking.

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Delivery impression
Martin Luther King had maintained eye contact throughout the speech and had been
firm about the topic that he wished to talk about. The speaker had been highly successful in
conveying his message to the audience and had been able to use his voice in an effective
manner as well. The use of body language by the speaker had been able to play a major role
in providing support to the ways by which he wished to convey the intended messages to the
audience (Lucas, 2017).

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References
Chorowski, J. K., Bahdanau, D., Serdyuk, D., Cho, K., & Bengio, Y. (2015). Attention-based
models for speech recognition. In Advances in neural information processing
systems (pp. 577-585).
Cone, J. H. (2018). America: A Dream or A Nightmare?. Journal of the Interdenominational
Theological Center, 13(2), 6.
Herbert, A. (2016). Martin Luther King:“Now is the time”-His Dream to Influence
Education Today. Springer.
Lucas, C. R. (2017, March). Prophetic Urgency: The 1963 James Baldwin and Martin Luther
King, Jr. Warnings to America. In Symposia: The Journal of Religion (Vol. 8, pp. 1-
15).
Youtube.com (2019). Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have A Dream Speech. [online] YouTube.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE [Accessed 2 Oct.
2019].