We the People
Susan B. Anthony's "Women's Right to Vote" speech in 1873 started a long, drawn out campaign for women's rights. Her speech helped get all women the right to vote, finally, in 1920. But how did her speech do that? What techniques persuaded people to think about giving women the right to vote? She very cleverly uses inductive logos and ethos to inform the people that holding this right from women is unconstitutional.
So, what is inductive logos? In Creating America: Reading and Writing Arguments Joyce Moser and Ann Watters define logos as "referring to the logic and shape of the argument"(12). They define induction as "generalizing from a number of observations, specific cases, or examples"(12). Basically, inductive logos is appealing to a person's sense of logic by using facts about the subject. Anthony does this many times in her speech.
In her speech Anthony states, "It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union"(389).
Opie and Anthony, Bill Burr
Anthony, Opie, Me, and Jimmy
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) with Susan B. Anth...This is an excellent example of inductive logos. She refers to the Constitution of the United States of America to let listeners know that women, along with men, helped to build this Union. Therefore, women should have the same rights as men. No questions asked!
Susan then goes on to talk about the words used in national and state constitutions. Anthony argues that "There is no she or her or hers in the tax laws, and this is equally true of all the criminal laws"(391). Logically, if women weren't included in the right to vote portion of the Constitution, nor the taxation and criminality, then they would be invincible to the country. There would be no laws to stop them from committing murder or...