Custom essays John Hancock

How is the language John Hancock uses similar to that of the Puritan preachers? Provide specific examples from Hancock’s speech and from the speeches of Whitefield or Edwards.
The language of John Hancock is similar to that of the Puritan preachers, especially Whitefield. He appeals to the reason of his audience but he also raises strong emotional impact to raise the patriotism and repulsion of the British in the American society. For instance, Hancock uses patriotic feelings of the audience to raise their repulsion of the British.
Furthermore, similarly to Edwards he uses fear to produce a profound impact on his audience. For instance, he virtually terrorizes his audience arguing that inaction and the maintenance of the British power in colonies will lead to the disaster and decay of the colonial society.
Therefore, Hancock uses the language of Puritan preachers to reach his audience. His speech is calm but full of persuading arguments that evoke strong emotions in his audience. On listening to the speech, people can hardly help from start acting.
6. Dickinson relies heavily on economic appeals, while Hancock appeals to higher ideals like patriotism. Which strategy do you find more effective? Why?
Dickinson does rely heavily on economic appeals. He does it to shift toward appeals to higher ideals like patriotism. He uses appeals to economic values to make higher ideals more comprehensible to the audience.
In such a way, the appeal to economic values prepares the audience to the main message of Dickinson’s letters. At the same time, he compares economic appeals to higher appeals. As a result, his message becomes persuading and comprehensible to the mass audience.
The appeal to economic values affects personal interests of each American. In such a situation, they cannot remain indifferent to ideas and message of Dickinson. On the other hand, the appeal to higher values may be not always comprehensible to the audience and the audience needs very strong and concise arguments to accept the standpoint and message of the speaker.
In actuality, the appeal to economic values is more effective compared to the appeal to patriotism. The appeal to economic values is more effective than the appeal to patriotism because economic values are closer and more comprehensible than appeal to such abstract concept as patriotism. Secondly, patriotism, being an abstract term, should be grounded on the real life examples and issues which affect the regular life of people. In fact, it is easier to understand what the lack of money or low income means than patriotism is needed for. In other words, economic values are comprehensible because we do not need any abstract thinking or examples. Instead, we can just refer to our regular life, recall the time, when we suffered from an economic crisis or economic problems, and we will be able to understand the full extent to which economic values are important. Hence, if there is any threat to our economic values, we are ready to start acting and to prevent this threat by all possible means.
As for patriotism, this argument is not always strong. At any rate, we can hardly respond to the appeal to patriotism, if we do not have any problems in our socioeconomic life. If we are prospering, we will hardly ever be patriots because we do not need to change anything in our life for the sake of a patriotism. What does motivate us to start acting is the threat to our lifestyle and to our economic values. This is why the appeal to economic values is more important and effective for me, in person, than appeal to patriotism.
7. How does Patrick Henry use fear appeals in his speech to convert colonists to his side?
Patrick Henry uses fear appeals to make his message more persuading. In fact, he uses fear appeals to raise strong emotions in his audience and to encourage people to start acting. In other words, fear in Henry’s speech becomes a strong motivator which affects consciousness, emotions and basic instincts of his audience.
Furthermore, fear is a strong emotion that virtually shocks the audience and makes people listen to Henry as a sort of prophet, who indicates the way to salvation. Naturally, people are ready to follow the lead of the speaker because of the strong sense of fear. The audience cannot think adequately and properly when people are under the impact of fear because they are vulnerable to the impact of panic caused by fear.
It proves beyond a doubt that fear is one of the basic feelings that makes the audience obedient to and confident in the speaker. Henry shocks his audience and then persuades that he can help people if they follow his lead. In such a way, the audience readily accepts the message of Henry and people are ready to follow his lead wherever he leads to because they want salvation, they want to get rid of the fear.
Henry uses fear to wreak havoc among the audience and to shock Americans. He uses the fear to force them to start acting because fear implies a threat to people, which they attempt to get rid of by all possible means. The use of fear is grounded on the real life examples and Henry uses fear whenever he needs to force his audience to take his message for granted. Through shocking the audience with fear, Henry catches the attention of the audience and forces people to follow his lead. Henry prepares his audience with the description of hardships of the life of colonists and, after that, he frightens his audience stating that their life will be even worse in the future if they fail to overthrow the British power in colonies. In such a way, he frightens the audience and gains its support.