Persuasive Language Strategy in Nelson Mandela’s Speeches by Using Aristotle’s Theory of Pathos

Abstract

This research has been taken on Nelson Mandela's political speeches by using Aristotle's theory of pathos (draw the audience's intention by offering and controlling the audience's emotion). The objective of the study is to know how people especially politicians attract people through persuasive strategies. The background of the study is based on political discourse analysis and it is a qualitative research. Nelson Mandela's ten speeches have been taken from different websites and analyzed by the Nvivo-12 software trial version which gave results in the form of percentage of words. It is analyzed by joining the most used words that are given in tables of each speech. All speeches are also analyzed by taking one sentence from each speech which is showing the persuasive strategy of pathos, which is given in italics. Nelson Mandela's most used pathos persuasive strategy in all 10 speeches is mentioned in the overall speeches' analysis. He used the pathos strategy to provoke the audience's feelings with sentences and phrases to persuade people toward his point of view.