Lesson video

Hello, I'm Ms. Howard.

Welcome back for the second lesson of our Rhetoric and Injustice unit.

So last lesson, that we found out all about Sojourner Truth and how she spoke as an abolitionist around America, including her iconic "Ain't I a Woman" speech.

I hope you enjoyed it.

It really is something quite magical.

Today we're going to have a look at that speech in little bit more detail, and really understand how Truth uses rhetoric and that particular type of language to build up her argument in what would've been quite difficult time.

So, you need to close down any distractions, or apps or conversations that you have running in the background, grab yourself a pen and a piece of paper, something to write on, find yourself a place where you won't be distracted and then we'll get started.

So, before we get started, I just want us to ponder on that idea of injustice and gender.

Because I think it's quite easy, when we look back in time, to think that these issues that people faced, that were very, very challenging, no longer exist.

But just imagine for a moment if your gender decided who you speak to, whether you're allowed to hold an opinion, whether you have a bank account or not, or have your own money, whether you're allowed to go places and not be accompanied by somebody else, somebody else has to come with you, not being able to hold opinions or make decisions, and particularly, as you grow up and go into adulthood, not be able to vote and contribute to the big decisions being made about the country that you live in.

Now, some of those no longer exist, if you're watching this within the UK, but we still have this element of people being treated differently according to their gender.

And that might be something that you keep in the back of your mind as we study this unit.

Because whilst lots of people, like Truth and Pankhurst, really campaigned to change the world and change the way that people saw women's rights, there's still some work to be done there and I just want you to ponder on that before we get started today.

So in today's lesson, we're going to recap on rhetoric and injustice and how one helps the other, or helps to highlight injustices, how rhetoric helps to highlight injustices.

We're going to explore how Truth uses rhetorical language to highlight injustice, are we going to consider why this was such an iconic speech? Iconic is monumental, memorable.

Now, remember we talked about the triad, the Aristotelian triad, and how these three elements of rhetoric all contribute towards building a really successful rhetorical speech or rhetorical writing.

So, we'll keep coming back to this idea of ethos, logos and pathos.

Ethos, to what extent your audience believe that you're trustworthy, logos, how logical and well evidenced you are, the proof of your argument, and pathos, to what extent have you made your audience feel or react in a particular way? Now, many great speakers throughout history have used rhetorical language to highlight the mistreatment of people in society and the injustice that they feel that people are suffering.

So this isn't something brand new.

However, it's really, really interesting to have a look at particular speakers and the way that they use rhetoric in such a way to change really huge issues within the world.

Let's have a look at this word again.

Injustice means if something is unfair, either morally or legally.

It doesn't have to be both.

Comes from the Latin injustitia, which means not just or right.

Let's have a little bit of a recap on Sojourner Truth.

She was an abolitionist.

I used that word with a star, which means an anti slavery campaigner, and a women's rights activist.

She was born as enslaved and spent her adulthood speaking in support of improved women's rights and freedom for the enslaved people in America.

Now, around the time that Sojourner Truth was speaking, the Emancipation Bill had already been passed.

So there was already a significant amount of work going on around antislavery.

However, what happened is that so many different states were quite slow to change their laws and change their approaches that Sojourner Truth and many others felt that it was necessary to continue to speak out about these injustices.

The Ain't I a Woman speech was incredibly powerful.

We're going to reread it, or I'm going to reread it for you.

What I want you to do is make notes about the words or phrases that you think are really significantly powerful.

You can pause the video at any point to make notes, and then we'll have a look at what you've got when we're finished up.

"May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter.

I have women's rights.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.

Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place.

And ain't I a woman? Look at me.

Look at my arm.

I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.

And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it, and bear the lash as well.

And ain't I a woman? I've born 13 children, and seen most all sold off into slavery.

And when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me.

And ain't I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in their head.

What's this they call it? That's it, honey.

What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? It's my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men 'cause Christ wasn't a woman.

Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman.

Man had nothing to do with him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again.

And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them." So, pause the video here and let me know the main message of Sojourner Truth's speech just to remind yourself.

And pick all that applies.

So if you feel that more than one applies, by all means, you can pick more than one.

Don't forget to press play when you're done.

How did you do? So you had two options here.

African American women are treated differently to white women.

So the man makes the argument, the fact that women are helped out of carriages and helped over puddles.

And Sojourner Truth raises the point, "Well actually, as an African or American woman, I'm not treated that way".

And women are more capable than men and unfairly treated.

So she does explain that actually she is as capable as a man, but unfairly treated, right? So let's have a look at the language in a little bit more detail and see how these compare with your notes around the powerful words used.

So right at the opening, Sojourner Truth puts together this argument about this comparison to a man.

So she says, she uses that tricolon.

"I have ploughed, and planted and gathered".

You've got those three quite powerful verbs that demonstrate her strength as a woman.

When she says no man can head me, she means that, if you've ever heard the saying, head and shoulders above the rest.

It means that you're much better than the rest.

She's saying no man can head me.

No man is better than me.

No man can compete with what I am capable of.

I am more capable when it comes to physical labour, on working in the fields and in the barns.

I am more capable.

And she uses that rhetorical question to enforce her argument.

Ain't a woman? And she uses and returns to that over and over again, doesn't she? We hear that repetition, that repeated question over and over again.

Ain't I a woman? So we have a tricolon example to demonstrate her strength, and her strength is that she's as strong as a man.

And we also have that rhetorical question to reinforce what she's saying.

So at the end of every idea that she puts forward, she uses that rhetorical question, ain't I a woman, to reinforce, to bring the audience back to the key message of her speech.

Let's have a look at the next section.

So here she uses this anecdote of her personal life to highlight this sense of injustice.

Now, this is really interesting and it might be something that you want to go away and have a look.

I won't spend too long on it.

But the speech has actually changed several times and have been rewritten.

Because obviously it was spoken, when the newspapers reported it there were certain elements changed.

Now, if you remember, if you've got a fantastic memory from last lesson, I told you how many children Sojourner had.

She actually had four children with the man, if you remember, the man who was enslaved at another local house.

They had four children together.

So this 13 children was actually exaggeration, hyperbole, to obviously dramatise this speech and make it more dramatic, make it more significant.

But she says, "when I cried out in my Mama's grief, when they were sold off to be enslaved".

And so, that the anecdote, that emotive language is really quite powerful there.

And she says, when nobody heard me but Jesus, it really demonstrates the fact that nobody really cared about how she was feeling, or that's how she felt at all.

Again, she returns to that rhetorical question at the end of the point.

So here, she uses an emotive anecdote to upset the audience, remember this is an all female audience, to cause them to experience pity and sadness.

Let's have a look at this final very clever argument that she constructs at the later point of this speech.

So she points to a man in the audience and she says, "That man there".

Remember this is an almost all female audience.

So the fact that she selects a man is very astute of her, it's very perceptive.

So she selects the man and she says, "That man says that we can't have as many rights because Christ wasn't a woman".

And this is at a time where religion means a great deal to many, many people.

And she says, she repeats that question, "Where did your Christ come from?" And she enforces it, as you might've heard when I spoke it, "Where did your Christ come from?" And she points out, "From God and a woman." So she demonstrates that Christ could not have been born if it were not for Mary, if it were not for a woman.

So she turns, she takes his argument about religion, about Christ not being a woman, and she turns it around to benefit her argument by saying actually, Christ might not be a woman, but woman created Christ.

So it's actually very, very clever.

So she uses the man's belief from the audience and provides what's called a counter argument, which is an alternative opinion.

Actually, your argument doesn't work and my argument is better, and here's why.

She finds problems with his idea, which then strengthens her own argument as a result.

If you want to pause the video at any point to make notes around these particular areas, because they might've linked to your notes around the powerful words that you picked out, then pause the video.

We have the closing of this sentence, this imperative sentence, the men better let them, demanding action.

Now it leaves a powerful final message for her audience to act upon the injustices that's surrounding them.

So it means that the speech isn't just her sharing how injust world is, how unjust the world is, sorry, and how painfully unfair it is, she gives them almost, it's like a mild threat, the men better at them.

This mild threat that she leaves women with that really helps motivate them to do something about this injustice, encourages them to act upon it, upon the way they're probably feeling in result of listening to her speak.

So let's have a think about how we would maybe structure this.

And we use what, how, why as a really useful way of exploring or analysing language.

So, let me give you an example.

I'd encourage you to pause the video after I've just talked through it and make some notes around this.

So, the what is the quotation from Truth's speech.

So Truth uses the emotive language, "When I cried out in my Mama's grief." So the writer here has explained the device that's being used, and has also used the evidence from the text.

That's their what.

What is being used? What language is being used? What rhetoric is being used? Then we move on to the how.

This is where they explain how the language is being used to make the audience feel a particular way, or how the language is being used to highlight a particular idea.

So let's have a look.

Truth uses the emotive language, "When I cried out in my Mama's grief", to encourage pathos from the audience.

She knows this would make people pity her loss, as they would imagine losing their own children.

So this writer has really thought about how it would impact the audience.

Because remember, mostly female audience.

So it would encourage that pathos.

We talked about that last lesson, didn't we? It would make them petty Truth as she shared this grief that she went through, losing her children.

Then why is why she would include it.

Why has she decided that that particular idea or that particular use of language would be useful or important? So why does she, why does she include that very personal idea within the speech as a whole? Well, she does this to emphasise the injustice in how even when women have very few rights, African American women had very little rights, so had even fewer rights.

Both they and their children were treated like possessions, as we saw, if you remember the last lesson, that auction slave block that I showed you.

So she does it to demonstrate the few rights that African American women like her had at the time.

Pause the video here.

What I'd like you to do is have a go at your own what, how, why to answer this question? How does truth use rhetorical language to highlight injustice? If you need some help, don't forget you can go back in the video and have a look at the speech itself, or you can look at the example on the what, how, why slide that I just showed you before.

I've given you some sentence starters here to start you off.

Best of luck.

Don't forget to replay the video when you're done.

Okay, so let's finish up by thinking about this question.

Why was this such an iconic speech? Like I said, it's very, very interesting to go away and have a read around this speech and how it was changed to make it more dramatic or more workable as a speech.

But it was such an iconic speech because there were so few African American women, particularly enslaved women, speaking out on such a topic.

This wasn't a time where speaking out as a woman, getting up on a stage and delivering speeches like this, that wasn't commonplace, that wasn't a frequent occurrence.

And so, it's not just the words and the rhetoric that Sojourner Truth uses that makes it iconic, memorable, but it's the fact that she decided to make the speech in the first place that makes it iconic as well.

Pause the video here and have a go at answering that question for yourself.

Don't forget to replay once you're done.

I think it's really interesting to end on this quotation, and it was a quotation from Thomas Jefferson.

It's actually one of the people that made the decision around the Emancipation Bill.

So whether we should continue to have people living enslaved or not.

And I'd like to leave this with you, because I think it's really important that we remember all of the reasons why individuals like Sojourner Truth thought that it was so important to talk about the injustices that they suffered and other people's suffering other time.

He said when the Emancipation Bill was being discussed, so the idea of no longer having people enslaved and working within a slave trade or owned by other individuals, he said, "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.

Justice is one scale and self preservation is in the other." And I think that's really important, because a great deal of the reasons behind why that bill, why that law wasn't passed to begin with was because individuals believed that particular groups of people had to be controlled.

And so, I think that's a really interesting statement to think on and how we would feel if somebody said that today, and how actually 150 years ago, 170 years ago, it was sad and maybe wouldn't have had the same reaction as maybe we would feel quite insulted by that today.

You've had a brilliant lesson.

Well done.

Especially getting to grips with what, how, why and understanding the use of rhetoric to present a particular idea or highlight injustice.

You've done incredible things today.

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

First of all, I want you to write down three things that you've learned or three things that you'd like to go away and find out.

'Cause I've given you lots of little bits and bobs that you could go away and read around.

And the second thing is, don't forget to complete your quiz.

I'm really interested to see how much you've learned.

And I'll see you next time.