Rhetorical Devices in Barack Obama’s of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters

Abstract

Rhetorical analysis refers to the study and use of written, spoken, and visual language. The intention of applying rhetorical devices is to compare things to give them more detail. It helps the reader better understand what is described in the text. The speaker’s style is determined by word choices, intonations, gestures, and sentence arrangements. The language used by Barack Obama always makes him special as he was the first Afro-American President. Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters authored by Barack Obama was published in 2010 with illustrations by Loren Long. It is a tribute to thirteen groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped the United States of America. The important historical figures mentioned here are Helen Keller who was deaf and blind and overcame the struggles, Jane Addams who comforted the poor, Maya Lin who was a designer who created memorials to honor heroic people, Albert Einstein who was an inventor, Georgia O’Keefe who was a painter, Jackie Robinson the first African American baseball player, Sitting Bull who was a Sioux medicine man, Billie Holliday who was an African American Jazz Singer, Cesar Chavez who was inspired farm workers to fight for their rights, Neil Armstrong who was the first man on the moon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a determined to unify America, Abraham Lincoln who taught what it was like to be part of an American family, and George Washington who was notably proud to be the first President of the United States of America. Barack Obama employs rhetorical devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy, paradox, hyperbole, and synecdoche in this book.