A Movement of Words: A Civil Rights Movement Metaphoric Criticism

Indianapolis, IN

This paper uses Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and President Lyndon B. Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech to analyze the rhetoric used by politcal figureheads during the Civil Rights Movement. Using metaphoric criticism this paper demonstrates the ability of a metaphor to not only portray an arugument but to become the argument. By analyzing the common metaphors used within each speech one can interpret the differing arguments and percepectives as well as the similarties between the two figureheads.