Jfk Speech Rhetorical Devices

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He used anaphora, or repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence, to create a rhythmic flow in his speech. Kennedy's speech also is filled with visual imagery, such as when he referred to the developing world "struggling to break the bonds of mass misery" (9). Of course, the most memorable rhetorical device in Kennedy's speech was his use of antithesis or "inversion" in two famous lines: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate" (15), and "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" (26). These "inversions sound deceptively easy and inevitable, as do all such concise and pointed expressions," according to rhetoric critic Burham Carter, Jr. In Carter's assessment,