In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. – minister and civil rights activist – summarizes the long history of American racial injustice. In this context, he encourages his audience to remind their country of its founding promises of equality, freedom, and justice (Rare Facts, 2017). Particularly, King pronounces the dream that one day, the country will realize its creed’s true meaning, justifying that all men are created equal.
In turn, during her speech at RedTalks, Alicia Garza – a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement – stresses the contemporary issue of racial inequality in the U.S., with an emphasis on African-American people’s struggle. She begins by exemplifying the reasons for which the BLM movement was created (Center for Constitutional Rights, 2015). Then, she narrows the scope toward domestic workers’ oppression and provides evidence of BLM’s successful activity alongside the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
While sharing several similarities, the speech of Dr. King has a significantly different effect on its listeners compared to Garza’s speech. Regarding the former, Dr. King and Garza both used assertive body language while presenting their ideas. According to Maloney & Moore (2020), assertiveness is defined as displaying confidence and standing up for personal rights directly and honestly. Being almost as important as outlook and verbal communication, assertive body language, which includes posture, hand gestures, and eye contact, can substantially influence the audience (Milal & Kusumajanti, 2020). In this regard, Dr. King’s and Garza’s postures are relaxed; their hands move only to emphasize crucial speech moments, whereas their palms are opened toward the audience.
However, the responses they receive from the crowd differ in number and magnitude. It can be attributed to the total number of people attending their speeches. Moreover, by slightly leaning backward and efficiently manipulating his voice’s tone and velocity, Dr. King invokes a greater feeling of confidence and solemnity. Nevertheless, the significance of a raised topic in the given time context has the most potent contribution to audience engagement.
The location of a speech has the potential to indirectly support the conveyed message. Due to the Lincoln Memorial’s importance in the American people’s eyes, Dr. King’s speech gains in significance, weight, and scope for its listeners. In addition, during the time without the internet, the number of people a certain location could hold also contributed to the overall speech’s effect. Currently, however, the internet allows for an almost unlimited reach, making the location less relevant in terms of message conveyance. Undoubtedly, it still has to adhere to specific standards, such as the podium for the speaker or little to no distractions. Nonetheless, it no longer belongs among the decisive factors of a speech’s effect.
4) The audiences in the cases of Dr. King and Garza have more differences than similarities. The speeches can be considered similar in affecting individuals deeply concerned with the raised topic. Consequently, in the same way, as Dr. King’s speech raises shouts and screams of approval, Garza’s speech also manages to invoke supportive exclamations. However, the overwhelming difference in audience alignment cannot be dismissed.
There are two main reasons for such a result – speech content and selective bias. Firstly, Dr. King’s speech contains much more generalized information, thus relating to a greater number of people. Secondly, the audience at RedTalks did not attend the event solely for Garza’s performance – RedTalks conferences host many speakers, each of whom has their own topics. Consequently, the audience is more dispersed in terms of beliefs, opinions, and values.
References
Center for Constitutional Rights. (2015). RadTalks: Alicia Garza [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Greenberg, E. S. & Page, B. I. (2018). The struggle for democracy – 2018 elections and updates edition. Pearson Education.
Maloney, M. E., & Moore, P. (2020). From aggressive to assertive. International Journal of Women’s Dermatology, 6(1), 46.
Milal, A. D., & Kusumajanti, W. (2020). Assertive speech acts performed by teacher in EFL classes. NOBEL: Journal of Literature and Language Teaching, 11(1), 83-100.
Rare Facts. (2017). I have a dream speech by Martin Luther King.Jr HD (subtitled) [Video]. YouTube. Web.