Lesson video

Hello, I'm Miss Howard, and welcome back for our third lesson of the rhetoric and injustice unit.

So for the last couple of lessons, we've had an exploration of Sojourner Truth and her "Ain't I a Woman" speech.

So we looked at her incredible journey and the way that she used rhetoric to produce quite very clever and sturdy and secure arguments for the injustices that she wants to discuss around, particularly around women's rights, For the next couple of lessons, we're going to look a little bit closer to home, at another fantastic female speaker who speaks out about injustices, starting her life in Moss Side Manchester and travelling all the way across the ocean to America to spread and campaign for what she thought was to be a really important piece of a really important message.

So before I start giving too many clues away, you'll need to close out any distractions or apps that you've got running in the background, grab yourself a pen and something to write on, and find yourself a quiet corner where you know that you won't be disturbed in any way.

And when you're ready, press play and we'll get started.

Let's get started.

So we've already been through the idea of using rhetoric to highlight injustice when we looked at Sojourner Truth, and we've also particularly looked at the idea of how individuals suffer injustice just solely as a result of their gender.

I thought this was a really interesting image to start with, and I found it fascinating when I first came across it.

This is published by the women's political union, and she really demonstrates the differences that women experienced during this particular time.

So you've got the women standing on one side and being told to stand back away from the ballot box.

Now the ballot box is where you'd put your choice in as to who you would vote for to run the country, and then you have on the other side convicted prisoners.

So individuals that would be carrying out sentences, so carrying out periods of time in prison for what could be quite serious crimes, and they still had better rights, they were still able to vote, and women were not.

And that just seems like a very different time, you know, as a woman to think about.

Then I thought, and had a look at the date, and thought 1911, that's only just over a hundred years ago that this was deemed entirely acceptable to deny women the vote just because there were women, for no other reason.

And so I thought it was a really interesting place to start, and when we think about, and we explore Emmeline Pankhurst and find out about her life and the campaigning that she felt was so important.

It was probably down to as a result of scenarios like this.

So I just want you to kind of bear that in mind, and the fact that this isn't that, when we talk about kind of the time before, it wasn't that long ago.

So in today's lesson, we're going to continue on our journey looking at rhetoric used to highlight injustice.

We're going to revisit what that word means injustice to ensure we have a really secure understanding of it.

We're going to find out all about Emmeline Pankhurst and her works, and why she used rhetoric, and how she used rhetoric in such a way to speak out about the injustice that she felt that women were experiencing at the time.

And then we're going to have a look at one of her iconic speeches where, and explore how she uses language to try and end injustice, and ultimately how she was one of the key figures in history that enabled people like me as a woman to vote today, to try and end that sense of injustice that women were feeling at the time.

Now we're going to keep coming back to our triad when we look at rhetoric, and so when we're exploring any key speech, we need to keep at the back of our mind these three elements, and to what extent the speaker manages to consider and include these three elements.

So you may want to pause the video here or just after when I've talked you through each one, just as a reminder to yourself, if you don't already have notes on an ethos, logos, and pathos.

So ethos is how trustworthy and credible the speakers appears to the audience.

We have to feel like they genuinely care about the topic that they're talking about, and that it's important to them.

Next up, to what extent they've included or incorporated logos.

So the content of their speech, so that it sounds logical.

They sound knowledgeable.

They very much sound like an expert, or they've consulted experts in their field around this particular topic that they're speaking on.

And last but not least, pathos.

So to what extent they evoke an emotional reaction from us as a result of listening to their speaking or reading their writing.

To what extent has that person managed to evoke an emotional response from me because ultimately, the more successfully we manage to incorporate a sense of pathos or evoke a sense of pathos, evoke, draw from, from our audience, the more memorable our speaking or writing is going to be, or that person's speaking, writing is going to be.

Now rhetoric has been used to highlight injustice throughout history, time again, all the way back from when Aristotle talked about it originally, all the way throughout history, it's used to highlight the mistreatment of people in society.

And it's such a fantastic tool, really it's down to the fact of rhetoric when applied successfully, it really is a secret weapon.

It's words, it's words as weaponry as such.

And we'll see that in Pankhurst's speaking today.

So let's just recap on this definition of injustice.

So injustice is if something is unfair, either morally or legally.

Now it doesn't have to be both.

So the way that we use the word injustice is very much if someone is feeling a sense of injustice, okay? So you don't necessarily, because notice it's a noun, you don't say you injusticed me because that would make no sense.

We suffer a sense of injustice, or we feel a sense of injustice, and it's from the Latin injustitia, which means not just or right.

So it's really about thinking if something is wrong, if something feels wrong morally or legally, then we're feeling a sense of injustice or a group could be feeling a sense of injustice.

Let's find out a little bit more about Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes.

So in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many women had started to campaign, and men, for women's rights, particularly women's rights to vote.

An overwhelming number of women became more and more aware of the injustices they suffered by not having the right to vote.

So actually the other areas of society that that limited them because they weren't making decisions when it mattered in parliament.

So women weren't allowed access to parliament, whereas men were and had the vote in parliament.

Now, two groups of this overwhelming number of women that were quite frustrated by this formed in order to campaign against the idea that women should, that women's rights should be limited.

Those two groups were known as the Suffragists and the Suffragettes.

Emmeline Pankhurst started as a renowned member of the Suffragists.

After being frustrated with their political approach to protest, so the Suffragists would have public gatherings, gather outside official buildings, but their protests were very peaceful.

So their approach was very peaceful in the way that they approached, their approach was very peaceful.

So Emmeline Pankhurst felt that there wasn't any change as a result of their protesting and campaigning.

Also that the change that did happen wasn't fast enough and wasn't as fast as it could be.

She got really frustrated and founded the WSPU, which is the Women's Social and Political Union, otherwise known as the Suffragettes.

Their motto was deeds, not words.

So deeds, actions.

So this idea of actions speak louder than words.

Their motto was deeds, not words, their protests, far more active and far more violent.

So examples included, they broke windows, they threw paint at members of parliament as they were coming out of the parliament building, they would handcuff themselves to official buildings.

So this is Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested at Buckingham Palace.

And if they were arrested, they'd go into prison and go on hunger strikes, forcing the authorities to release them.

Let's see how you get on here.

Have a go at this multiple choice question.

Suffragists and Suffragettes protested for, pause the video, let's see how you get on.

Fantastic work if you got option two.

Suffragists and Suffragettes protested for the women's right to vote.

So let's find out a little bit more about Emmeline Pankhurst.

Now Emmeline Pankhurst was married to an individual who actually puts into place laws for women around marriage, whether women could own their own property or not, or keep their own finances or not.

So we're really talking about an entirely different time when women weren't allowed to hold their own bank account, for example.

And so she came from a background of campaigning for this sense of equity.

So for women to be able to do everything that essentially men could do.

This is her here with her daughter Christabel.

So her two daughters, Sylvia and Christabel were actually also very, very actively involved in the Suffragettes.

In 1913, sorry, before I get to that as well, she was born in Moss Side in Manchester, from north to kind of northwest area, however, she spoke a great deal, not just at home and protested at home in Great Britain, she also went across to America and delivered the same key messages over there.

And her famous "Freedom or Death" speech that we're going to have a look at was delivered to a crowd in Connecticut in America.

However, a great deal of the work that she carried out was across both countries, America and England.

So in 1913, she delivered this famous "Freedom or Death" speech to a crowd in Connecticut.

Now, she uses very military language within the speech, and the speech lasted a full 90 minutes, and it had two key messages to it.

One, around improving women's rights and why that was important.

But two, she justified the aggressive, violent kind of active strategies that were being used by Suffragettes at the time.

Now the reason that she would maybe need to feel that she needed to justify their actions was because they were looked at as far more controversial in contrast to the peaceful Suffragists that were carrying out peaceful protest, turning up without any kind of aggression or action, and having these public gatherings.

And then the Suffragettes, who were taking a far more violent approach.

Now, inevitably because of the fact that they had a far more active, violent approach, they received far more media attention.

People are far more aware of their messages.

So in that sense, she'd carried out what she wanted to achieve and get people talking about women's rights to vote.

However, some people looked upon them with a sense of disapproval, that they didn't necessarily feel that the way they were going about campaigning was necessarily, was needed really.

And so it was viewed as quite controversial.

So in her speech, she talks about this, about raising awareness of women's rights and of that being essential.

And that's her key message, but her other key message is justifying these aggressive strategies.

Let's have a look at this word justify to make sure that we've got a really secure understanding of it before we look at the speech.

So justify is a noun, it's to show or prove.

So it's to show the reasons as to why you're doing something.

If you justify your actions, you're showing the reasons as to why your actions are necessary.

It's from the Latin justus, which means to do justice to, so it's all this idea that you're proving that what you're doing is just, it's right, it's acceptable.

Pause the video here, have a go at these three questions, full sentences for me, please.

And you might want to use, because in there to kind of essentially explain your ideas.

So, number one, what injustice did the Suffragettes protest for? Number two, what was the Suffragette's motto? And number three, this is your kind of own thinking.

Why would Pankhurst feel the need to justify the Suffragette's behaviour in her speech? Good luck.

How did you get on? Don't worry too much if your words aren't exactly like mine.

Also, notice that mine aren't as good I would say a stretch as full sentences as I'm sure that yours are.

So the women's right to vote is what the Suffragettes were protesting for, that injustice, that they didn't have the vote.

The Suffragette's motto was deeds, not words, And Pankhurst maybe felt the need to justify the Suffragette's behaviour because of their violent approach it would have been met with disapproval by some people.

We're going to have a look at this "Freedom or Death" speech.

Now she delivered this to a crowd of supporters which we need to keep in mind that if we're thinking about her rhetoric as a persuasive tool, her crowd probably didn't need a great deal of persuading they were all for her.

However, we have essentially a dual layer, a double layer here in the fact that it would have been delivered, and then reporters would have taken it and put out in the media.

So you almost have kind of two audiences here.

As you listen, as you read her speech, I'm going to read it through for you, but you're also going to have it on the screen as well.

What I want you to do is make a note of any language that sounds as though the military, so the army for example, might use.

So a couple of examples here for you, soldier or battle, that kind of language.

Just have a look at where she uses this as an extended metaphor for her role, and we'll explore that in a little bit more detail once we've read through the speech as a whole.

Now, before we get started, there's three words within the speech that I feel that might be quite handy for us to explore what they mean.

So if you need to pause the video at this point, just once I've talked through them, just so you can note down what they mean, so that when we get to them later on, you'll go oh, yeah that's that word.

So enfranchisement is giving a right or a privilege to a specific group.

Enfranchisement is giving a right or a privilege to a specific group.

Permeate, permeate, such a lovely word, is to spread throughout, something permeates.

So it's a verb, it spreads throughout.

Last but not least, sacrificed.

You can give something up, and I've put the past tense in there because she uses past tense, but sacrifice, the present tense, the present verb is to give something up.

Pause the video if you need to make a note of any of those.

"I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field "of battle in order to explain, "it seems strange it should have to be explained, "what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women.

"We women, in trying to make our case clear, "always have to make as part of our argument, "and urge upon men in our audience the fact, "a very simple fact, that women are human beings.

"We were called militant, "and we were quite willing to accept the name.

"We were determined to press this question "of the enfranchisement of women to the point "where we were no longer to be ignored by the politicians.

"If you are dealing with an industrial revolution, "if you get the men and women of one class "rising up against the men and women of another class, "you can locate the difficulty.

"If there is a great industrial strike, "you know exactly where the violence is, "and how the warfare is going to be waged, but in our war against the government, you can't locate it.

"We wear no mark, we belong to every class, "we permeate every class of the community "from the highest to the lowest, and so you see "in the woman's civil war the dear men "of my country are discovering "it is absolutely impossible to deal with it.

"You cannot locate it, and you cannot stop it.

"Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, "we have brought the government of England to this position, "that it has to face this alternative.

"Either women are to be killed "or women are to have the vote.

"You won your freedom in America "when you had the revolution, "by bloodshed, by sacrificing human life.

"You won the civil war by the sacrifice of human life "when you decided to emancipate the negro.

"You have left it to women in your land, "the men of all civilised countries have left it to women, "to work out their own salvation.

"That is the way in which we women of England are doing.

"Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is "to be sacrificed it shall be ours.

"We won't do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy "in the position where they will have to choose "between giving us freedom or giving us death." Let's have a look back.

So here, Pankhurst starts with this analogy of her as a soldier, this fierce language, "I come here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle." So she explains, she describes herself as a soldier.

And though she is temporarily come from the battle that she has been fighting for women to make this speech, she opens with that collective noun, we women in making our case clear, and she reduced it to that very simple fact.

Women are human beings in order to level the playing field as such.

Now throughout here, she makes the very, very strong argument that you can't really segregate women.

You can't really fight against women because women are everywhere.

She says, "We wear no mark." Notice to the collective noun.

"We wear no mark, we belong to every class, "We permeate every class of the community "from the highest to the lowest." She uses that tricolon, a very simple fact about the fact that women that are in all corners of society.

So you can't actually take them out and treat them separately because they exist everywhere.

She also closes on that very clever statement in the fact that she says, well, you either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote.

Now you can't really argue with that sort of logos, can you? That idea, that argument, that well, either women, you need to get rid of all women, or you need to treat them equally because they permeate everywhere.

They're spread everywhere.

So you can't treat them differently because they're in all corners of society.

Now, here she talks about freedom and revolution, if we're thinking about military language.

But she also talks around sacrifices, doesn't she? If we're thinking about military language of kind of people going to battle, and how women are at war against those that don't seek to give them a sense of equality.

She says, "Human life for us is sacred, "but we say if any life is to be sacrificed, "it shall be ours." And she talks about those that don't agree with her.

She goes on to describe them as the enemy, which again, very military language.

"We won't do it ourselves, "but we will put the enemy in the position "where they will have to choose between giving us freedom "and giving us death." Now that argument, that statement, that closing statement, it really gives no alternative if we're thinking again about this sense of logos.

It gives no alternative.

It makes a very reasonable, rational argument when she says, well, if you're not going to give us freedom, like everybody else, because we permeate in all areas of society, then you'll have to kill us all because I'm not sure what the alternative is.

It's a very, very, clever argument.

She closes here, and she says around again, military language, "I set my foot on British soil." That's very kind of military-esque where she says, "I set my foot on British soil," that's what a soldier does when he gets off of the kind of armed forces aeroplane.

"I come to ask you to help us win this fight." Again, that use of military language around the fight that she's campaigning for.

"If we win it, this hardest of all fights, "then, to be sure, in the future, "it is going to be made easier for women of all the worlds "to win their fight when their time comes." When their time comes, again, it's very much like a soldier signing up for war and waiting to be called.

So that repetition of the word fight in there, it really helps to reinforce this overarching metaphor of Pankhurst as a soldier.

So let's pull out some key examples here and see how close your, you might want to add to your notes.

"I'm here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field "of battle in order to explain." So it's this idea that her time is very precious, and she's come away from the battlefield to speak to this crowd of people, to make them aware.

"We were no mark, we belong to every class, "We permeate every class of the community "from the highest to the lowest." So you have that, "We wear no mark." It's very much like a soldier's kind of accolades that they usually wear on their arm.

This idea of we were no mark.

So it's almost like she's operating like a secret soldier as opposed to wearing a particular mark.

This idea, this tricolon of, we wear no mark.

We belong to every class, We permeate every class of the community from the highest lowest.

Again, it's that idea of ranking that we have in the military of kind of, you know, sergeants and officers.

And in her closing, "I come to ask you "to help to win this fight.

"If we win it, it will be the hardest of fights." And that repetition of the word fight that she uses to describe the fights, the cause that women have to fight this sense of injustice.

So you have throughout the opening, the development, so that the bulk of the speech, the middle part of the speech, and the closing, this repeated return to this military language that Pankhurst uses through out.

So you've got her opening, her very strong opening, "I'm here as a soldier," which helps create a really strong sense of ethos in the front that's something so important to her, she sees herself as a representative of battle.

Two, this tricolon, we wear no mask, we belong, "We wear no mark, we belong to every class, "we permeate every class," of this idea that she, they belong to all ranks of society.

And then at the end, that directly addressing the crowd, "I've come to ask you to help to win this fight." It's almost like she's enlisting further soldiers to help her win the fight.

Now, this repeated idea, this repeated analogy that Pankhurst returns to over and over again of the military language that she uses to represent herself as a soldier of the cause, it really helps to backup the fact that her arguments are logical and they're well evidence.

We feel as though she has really thought out this argument, that women should either have freedom in the same way that everybody else, all men do or be dead.

And she offers that.

And when we say it in isolation of the speech itself, you're like, well that's quite dramatic.

That's quite drastic.

That's quite dramatic.

But actually by using this military language that she threads through out and offering and implying that women have this kind of sense of sacrifice, that actually makes an incredibly strong argument and very well evidenced argument for her to explain, well, this is why the Suffragettes are behaving in the way that they're behaving.

This is why our actions and our campaigning is quite violent and quite active, because we don't have a choice.

And so it's very, very interesting to see that how that military language throughout really builds a strong sense of logos, not only for the fact that women's rights should be necessary, but also to justify how the Suffragettes have been portrayed in the press or have behaved during their protesting as well.

So there's a very, very strong case for her to appear knowledgeable and logical and rational, reasonable in her argument.

So what I'd like you to do now is have a go at this question.

Why does Pankhurst describe herself as a soldier? Now you may want to include a particular quotation.

So feel free to skirt back through the speech as a whole to get your ideas.

You may want to use your existing notes as well to answer that question.

Now for an extra challenge, what I'd like you to do is have a go at including those three words that I've got on the screen, injustice, military, and justify, particularly when you're thinking about the key purpose of this speech as a whole.

If you're struggling to get started, I've just popped a sentence starter on there for you to open your short piece of writing.

Best of luck.

How did you get on? Well done for today.

I think you've worked fantastically.

I hope you enjoyed Pankhurst's speech.

I think it's incredibly powerful and really quite intelligent the way that she presents the argument and the actions of the Suffragettes, and not only raises awareness of women's rights and the women's right to vote, but also makes a very clever use of rhetoric to justify the Suffragette's actions as essential, this idea that she's a soldier enlisting other soldiers to this necessary cause.

It's a very, very clever argument, and I hope you've enjoyed it.

I would strongly encourage you to go and have a look at the work of the Suffragettes and how they changed history overall.

It's a fantastic read.

It's also very bitter sweet because Pankhurst didn't get to see the change in the law for women earning the right to vote.

So it's really interesting.

I'd like you to do two things for me today.

I'd like you to write down three things that you've learned from the lesson as a whole.

I'd also like you to complete your quiz, and so I can see how much you've learned.

Next lesson, we'll have a look at comparing Truth's speech and Pankhurst's speech, and see how they deliver a very similar message, but a very, very different use of rhetoric between one speech and the other.

I'll see you next time.