How does Mark Antony use language in 3.2 to take power away from Brutus and the other conspirators?
During Antony's speech he uses language as his main weapon to take power away from Brutus and the conspirators so he can avenge his dead friend Caesar, the leader of Rome; however I believe there may well be an underlying political motive for gaining power off the conspirators. He clearly uses great skill as at the start of the speech he has to persuade the conspirators while barely mentioning his opinion of how good Caesar was so as not to endanger his life. He uses devices such as rhetorical questions and synthetic personalisation to achieve this.
Antony's use of synthetic personalisation, brings the crowd round to his side as it's as if Antony is making himself equal to them; the most obvious use of this is when he says 'your hearts and minds' and 'to wrong myself and you'.
Marcus Junius Brutus (Rome character)
The Death of Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema ...The pronoun 'you' and 'your' helps Antony appear to be talking to specific people in the crowd making them more inclined to listen to what he says and side with him. He employs this technique more subtly when he refers to the crowd as 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen'. He is saying to the crowd they're his friends, which at first may not seem that striking but later in the same speech he says 'come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.//he was my friend.' As he has called Caesar his friend within twelve lines of saying the same thing to the Plebians it makes them feel as if they are at Caesar's level in Mark Antony's eyes. This flattery softens the crowd to Mark Antony's views allowing him to be more rash and he begins to be a lot less subtle in his...