Malcolm X's "Message of the grassroots" speech -lanugauge analysis

Authors Avatar

Message in the Grass roots is a speech which was written to persuade the black people of America to put their differences aside and unite against the American racist hypocritical culture and defend themselves , so they can stay in  America  by forming a black nation. Evidence of this is when he states ‘forget our differences and come together’ and also he calls the black people the ’same family’, he then says that they need to ‘defend our own people right here in this country’ . This shows that Malcolm X has a strong opinion that the black people need to stick together and have a ‘united front’ in front of the ‘oppressing white man’. Also he is trying to explain to the black people that the hypercritical fascist white people aren’t part of the ‘family’ ; they’re the ‘enemy to all’. He also encourages the black people to have a real revolution, which involves violence. He justifies this violence, as he says the American’s always fight abroad ,so why not us.

In the speech Malcolm X uses language very cleverly to affect the audience; who are the black people of America. He uses a first person style of writing , which immediately engages the listeners attention. An example of this is when he says ‘you and me--us. We’ . He adds two dashes after ‘you and me--us ‘,to indicate a long pause .The pause is used to put an emphasis on the ‘us’. This makes the speech effective as it makes the reader feel like Malcom X is speaking directly to them and so they feel included. In turn the listener will be persuaded to take action to what Malcolm says about forming a black nation and real black revolution.

Join now!

The majority of Malcom X’s audience were practicing Christians .For that reason he says ‘we don’t come together as Baptist or Methodist’. He says this to connect with the audience, and make them understand that they need to put their religions and conflicts aside, and unite as a black people.

Besides this ,Malcolm x also uses quite short sentence .For example he says ‘America’s problem is us’ .Short sentence similar to this are used throughout the speech ,so that the audience can understand it better. The black people at that period in time weren’t as well educated than the whites ...

This is a preview of the whole essay