What Is an American?

What is an American?

It’s 1941 and Germany is on the verge of taking over England, America’s number one ally. America, however, has yet to declare war on Germany and provide aid to England. Some Americans were divided in the notion of joining the war; half the country wanted to join and help our allies and the other half declared that it wasn’t any of our business and we should stay out of it. “America was coming out of a devastating economic depression, not to mention less than 20 years ago 116,516 U.S troops had died in Europe, fighting World War 11” (The Free Library). However, Harold Ickes, who was President Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, knew better than to just sit back and watch England be taken over by Germany. He knew, that if that were to happen, it would only be a matter of time until the Nazis conquered America as well. He felt it necessary to deliver a persuasive message to Americans everywhere to unite and help England prevent Germany from invading their country. Ickes did this by appealing to their ethos, pathos and logos while at the same time using scare tactics. Ethos, as we all know is appeal to credibility and ethicality and the audience must be convinced of the credibility of the speaker. Pathos is appeal to emotion, which means the speaker persuades them by stirring their emotions towards his intent. Logos is appeal to logic, which means the speaker will use logical reasoning to persuade the audience. We will be using the Theory of Reasoned Action, and its three general constructs; Behavioral Intention (BI), Attitude (A) and Subjective Norm (SN) in order to understand what moved Americans to unite and fight against Germany. “TRA posits that individual behavior is driven by behavioral intentions where behavioral intentions are a function of an individual's attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms surrounding the performance of the behavior” (BYU). We will use TRA to determine the effectiveness of the speech, which parts...