#teamrhetoric

Malcolm X, just after stating to the crowd that it's “either the ballot or the bullet,” directs his audience toward a clarification on “something concerning myself” (p. 24). What follows is his use of the rhetorical figure, anaphora, where a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses to amplify how he is similar to other Christian ministers doing similar civil rights work. He states:

I'm still a Muslim, my religion is still Islam. That's my personal belief. Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister..., but at the same time takes part in the political struggles to try and bring about rights to the black people in this country; and Dr. Martin Luther King is a Christian minister..., who heads another organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this country; and Rev. Galamison... is another Christian minister... who has been deeply involved in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education...

At this point, Malcolm X's repetitious use of the phrase “... is a Christian minister” coupled with some variation of work for civil rights for black people creates what Brian Vickers calls an “echoing structure” (p. 91) where it forces the audience to connect minister's leading these political struggles. Malcolm X uses this structure to then emphasize his commonality with this group of ministers/leaders, when he says, “... well I myself am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim minister; and I believe in action on all fronts by whatever means necessary” (p. 24). Here, after the former anaphoric repetition, he uses another forceful figure, anadiplosis, where the word “minister” ends the first clause, and then ends the subsequent clauses to both distinguish him from the others, but, again, amplify his shared goals with these other ministers struggling for civil rights.

These figurative means toward commonality is made explicit in the following passage, when he uses anaphoric repetition once again, but this time he uses it to clarify his intentions, saying “I'm not here to try and change your religion. I'm not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it's time for us to submerge our differences” (emphasis added). His emphasis on what he is “not here” to do is then replaced with his notion of differences with another andiplosis, saying that “it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem—a problem that will make you catch hell whether you're a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist” (emphasis added). All of these forceful figures work together to highlight this composite audiences core issue at hand, “catching hell,” regardless of religious or political beliefs. Through these forceful figures, he aligns as he divides, constructing an antithesis in this macrostructure, thus far, which essentially states, I am different, but we are the same in our situation in America.

This figurative pattern does not change, but what does is his shift to the use of “we” instead of “I”. To amplify this shift in voice, he uses combination of anaphora followed by an andiplosis, stating that “We're all in thesame boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man” (emphases added). Notice the subtle shift from the more general and colloquial “boat” to the echo of “hell” to “man” and finally pared down “white man” in under 30 words. From there, he employs the synecdoche “white man” in another chain of repetition opposite of anaphora, using a combination of epistrophe and another breaking of the whole into parts, synecdoche, to amplify the shared “hell” that the “white man” has made all of them “suffer;” namely “political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man ” (emphases added). These forceful figures, coupled with synecdoche, which simplifies the subject of their oppressor, enable Malcom X to express his own attitudes and positions, while also, more importantly, uniting this composite audiences toward a common experience. While Demetrius does not categorically define the effects of such forceful figures, Malcolm X's “charm lies in [his] meaning” (Vickers, p. 91). That is, the narrative of his own and the audience's shared American experience as black people “at the hands of the white man.”

I argue that in the following passage, Malcolm X solidifies this common experience, responding to his stronger language toward white culture in the previous passage, using a combination of three figures—antitheses and anaphora, which have been used before, but also a variation of antanaclasis with the prefix “anti”—to underline his point and echo the overarching message he has stated just before. He says, “Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti- exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.” (p. 24-25). Here, the repetition of the prefix “anti” establishes first what is not meant by his opposition to the “white man” by then disassociating the “white man” from their, (as white man refers to the institutions governed by white culture), actions of “oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.” Of importance to note, this particular echoing passage also employs polysyndeton, the inclusion of additional conjunctions, to, as Arthur Quinn suggests, generate “the sense of an ever lengthening catalogue of roughly equal members” (p. 11), or, in this case, an ever-reverberating sense of oppression about Malcolm X and his audience's shared experience of oppression, living in America.

Finally, I argue that Malcolm X solidifies this process of uniting the composite audience in the next passage, which echoes the prior differences of being with more forceful figures, to then declare a firm stance in commonality in this shared experience:

Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. (emphases added, p. 25)

From the onset, the listed set of beliefs are repeat acknowledgments of differences that or presented with the use of polysyndeton, “or,” to create equality amongst these composite groups. Furthermore, differences is first treated via anadiplosis to then transform into action, “differ;” a subtle pun, serving as a antanaclasis, redirecting his and the audience's focus on the shared issue at hand: “the man,” which is Malcolm X's consistent use of synecdoche.

In “Repetition and Emphasis in Rhetoric,” Vickers argues that humans do not simply transfer information from one human to another with language, but instead, “[language] expresses our identity as social beings, permits and monitors relationship to other social beings, [and] fulfills irreducibly personal, subject-generated and subject-oriented goals” (p. 85). In this case of Malcolm X, delivering his “Ballot or the Bullet” speech to a crowd of difference, he used Demetrius' sense of forceful figures to both express his own self, as well as recognize the differences of everyone else in this composite audience not to divide, as the white man is working to do unto them. But, through their shared experience of “catching hell,” and complex use of figures of repetition to underline this experience, Malcolm X unites as he makes such differences known. Without establishing this common experience, living in America as a black person, I argue that he would have been harder pressed to establish his case of explicating their options between “either the ballot or the bullet.”

References

Malcolm X. (1965). The ballot or the bullet. In George Brietman (Ed.), Malcolm X speaks (pp. 23-44. New York, NY: Grove Weidenfield.

Quinn, A. (1982). Figures of speech: 60 ways to turn a phrase. Layton, UT: Gibbs. M. Smith Inc.