Review of Arts and Humanities

A Rhetorical Analysis of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's Use of Rhetorical Questions in His Speech at the First OAU Summit in 1963
Theophilus Tawiah

Abstract
Language is the medium through which politicians influence people to get their support. This paper aims to assess how Dr. Kwame Nkrumah attempts to use language to achieve persuasion by analyzing his use of rhetorical questions in his speech at the first OAU summit in 1963. It was found that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah used rhetorical questions with diverse syntactic structures, such as wh-questions, yes/no questions, and declarative questions in his speech. The rhetorical questions were identified from the questions themselves as they made assertions on their own, and question and answers when Nkrumah directly answered his questions. He adopted rhetorical questions as a means to make assertions and stir emotions to persuade the audience to accept his proposal “African Unity”.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/rah.v12a4