Rhetorical analysis of the Communist Manifesto
Dafna Bicaci
IB English Language and Literature
Written Task 3
Part 1 Written Task 2
Course Section & Area of Study : Language and Media: Power and Privilege
Title for the Analysis: Manifesto of The Communist Party
Question: How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?
Topic: Depiction of a social group through a Manifesto
Issue: How and why did Marx and Engels use language to represent or promote a social group?
Aim:
To understand the topic of how and why the Manifesto was written to represent one social group, I will analyze the language they used. How did the language they used show the m as authority to represent the proletarians?
In order to know the real intention behind the text, the history of the Manifesto will be studied.
What message is given through language will be analyzed.
What message the society gets from this text will also be analyzed.
Understanding the significance of why the proletarians and the bourgeoisie have been represented this way.
Manifesto of the Communist Party was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in December 1847. Marx and Engels were both German Marxist political theorists who believed changing the nature of society and politics to a better level. The Manifesto was meant to propose problems of capitalism and solutions for those problems. Capitalism created the problem of worker exploitation and Marx and Engels hoped that writing the Communist Manifesto, they would create a utopian society where there are no different classes such as the poor people (proletarians) and the rich people (the bourgeoisie). Their idea was to unite the proletarians to fight against capitalism by persuading them that they do not have to be considered lower class just because they are the ones who are working. Marx and Engels were appealing to proletarians’ solidarity by using linguistic terms; anaphora and epistrophe, rhetorical questions and on of the rhetorical appeals established by Aristotle; logos to be as persuasive as possible.