In 1863, both Abraham Lincoln and Edward Everett shared the podium to dedicate the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the soldiers who gave their lives during the Civil War.
However, when you think of the Gettysburg Address, the first name that comes to mind isn’t Edward Everett. Although he was a renowned Senator, Congressman, and President of Harvard University, he failed to achieve what Lincoln had; give the most memorable speech consisting of only 10 sentences and 272 words. Through out the speech, Lincoln uses great stylistic techniques that not only grabs the audience's attention, but makes history.
The Gettysburg Address is overall categorized as having a style of generic type. Abraham Lincoln is praised for his speech because of his “plainness of structure, simplicity of wording, abstraction, and even brevity” (Zarefsky), and all those elements add to the meaning of his speech. His purpose that day was to not only dedicate the ground to the soldiers already gone, but he had to build courage within the ones still fighting. By saying, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure” (Lincoln), is what first off makes this speech to have the generic type of style. This line shares the purpose of the speech, and have being brought together due to a horrific tragedy. This line is also the second sentence of the speech. Knowing that, the audience is still fully engaged into what he has to say, so that was the perfect time for Lincoln to ask for everyone’s bravery. The Civil War was still going on and Lincoln realized that he also had to inspire the soldiers to continue the fight.
While keeping oral versus written style in mind, the speech overall sounded poetic and had this writing type feel to it. Although reading it to myself made it seem as an “easy read,” reading it aloud almost sounded like a song. Through out the speech, simple language was used. Although there were confusing metaphors such as, “Fourscore and seven years ago,” Lincoln didn’t go out of his way to make one word sound more technical than the other. I believe that’s one of the reasons why the speech was so short. I found the speech way more effective when I read it out loud because like I mentioned before, many poetic elements were used that reading it silently are in a sense, invisible to the naked eye. For instance, the lines: “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” Taking these lines and reading them aloud will get you to realize that the poetic element of consonance is used. Lincoln used repetition of the letter “f” to grasp a stronger speech diction. That’s one of the reasons why it was so easy to remember in high school.
Any paraphrased version, in my eyes, is just a written summary. It doesn’t consist of any particular style, use any special elements, it’s just written. Whereas the actual address contains poetic language and elements, simplicity, and repetition. The paraphrased version makes me appreciate stylistic language even more because I now know that’s the reason Lincoln’s version is today, the most memorable. In short, there’s nothing wrong with a long, informative speech; however, using stylistic language makes everything much easier.
Works Cited
Zarefsky, David. "Chapter 12: Achieving Style Through Language." Public Speaking: Strategies for Success. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2011. 281. Print.
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