The two-sided world-view in Roosevelt´s 'First War Address Before Congress'

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3 (A), Martin Luther University (Institute for Anglistics/American Studies), course: Rhetorical Analysis of Historical and Present-day Political Speeches, language: English, abstract: After the Japanese attack on the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. When Germany and Italy then declared war against the United States, World War II truly became worldwide. In his speech First War Address Before Congress, made on January 6, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt mentions several things: past historical events that led to the present situation, the necessity of war-production, the attempt to justify war, the creation of a negative picture of the enemy and a positive picture of his own people and claims that only total victory over the enemy can end the war, to mention just a few. War rhetoric as such is part of the actual war, so its creation and development goes back quite a time in history as the human race has always made war upon each other. The first war message of the United States was the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Besides the common features of war rhetoric the Declaration of Independence and later United States´ war messages (up to today's messages by George W. Bush) also include specific American features. In this term paper I am going to show that by using the techniques of war rhetoric Franklin Delano Roosevelt creates an imaginary two-sided world. To emphasize the importance of this two-sided world-view and for an overview that will serve for the whole term paper I collected and arranged examples from the speech in two charts. After setting up the two sides I will go into further detail and examine this both sides in more detail: the creation of a negative picture of the enemy on the one side and the diminishing of one´s own soldiers` actions by using euphemisms on the other side. The overall aim of war rhetoric is to justify the war and to unite the nation in order to defeat the enemy. This is the point where all the little details again meet and the parts of the speech unite into one basic concept.