We Are Marshall Essay

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Marshall" speech contains the classic rhetoric elements of ethos, pathos and logos in order to motivate the Marshall football team in its upcoming game. The first element of the speech is the pathos, which is an appeal to emotion. The setting of the speech is specifically chosen in order to elicit this emotion, when the coach takes the team to the graves of the unknown players. Death is a powerful emotional trigger, and when the death is that of the former Marshall football team, that is an even more powerful emotional trigger. Choosing the "unknown player" graves has an even stronger emotional significance for the players, because they as Marshall football players can relate directly to the unknown players as equals, instead of having a specific identity. This spurs emotions more by allowing the players to emotionally equate themselves with the deceased players. Thus, the setting alone is a strong appeal to pathos.

The appeal to pathos does not end there, but the words of the speech themselves consist of emotional appeals.

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The coach directly appeals to the players' hearts, which is the emotional component of their athletic selves, something that is not physical but invokes courage, bravery and other positive emotional attributes. The appeal to pathos is also found in the opening of the speech, where the coach mentions "this is our past" right after telling of the tragedy. This appeals to the players in terms of putting themselves in that emotional state of tragedy, before the coach later asks the players to draw emotional inspiration from those tragic circumstances, literally invoking the phoenix.

There is also ethos in this speech. Ethos is the ethical appeal. The speaker is the coach and the audience is the team, so there is some element of ethos in this appeal. His voice is calm for an inspirational speech, which appeals to his credibility as leader. He keeps the speech short and sweet, which also increases his credibility as a motivational speaker, because his words….....

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