UNIT 2: SO THEY SAY

PLAYS, SPEECHES, AND THE GIFT OF GAB

Unit Overview

How do you master the power of words in speech, discussion, and writing?

In our second unit, we'll start with examining the variety of rhetorical appeals and devices used by famous speeches throughout history such as those by Abraham Lincoln and Sojourner Truth. Continuing our study of sound reasoning, we'll practice writing solid arguments and counterarguments using claims, evidence, and reasoning. We will explore the power of the spoken word with a selection of spoken word poems. We'll deepen our knowledge of rhetoric and arguments by reading the play 12 Angry Men. Our end of the unit performance task will be an argument paper in which students write a letter to the editor in order to justify the jury's final verdict in the drama. Students will need to utilize their knowledge of rhetoric, claims, evidence, reasoning, and counterarguments.

Reading & Writing Skills

Connotation & Denotation
Rhetorical Appeals & Devices
- Rhetorical analysis
Argument & Evidence-based writing
- Socratic seminar

UNIT 2 TEXTS

Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... " (Source)

Sojourner Truth is best known for her extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851.

Born in upstate New York circa 1797, Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She devoted her life to the abolitionist cause and helped to recruit black troops for the Union Army. Shortly after her escape, Truth learned that her son Peter, then 5 years old, had been illegally sold to a man in Alabama. She took the issue to court and eventually secured Peter's return from the South. The case was one of the first in which a black woman successfully challenged a white man in a United States court. She soon began touring regularly, speaking to large crowds on the subjects of slavery and human rights. She was one of several escaped slaves, along with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, to rise to prominence as an abolitionist leader and a testament to the humanity of enslaved people. (Source)

Language Skills

Subjects & Predicates
Independent Clauses
Simple & Compound Sentences
Subordinate Clauses
Complex & Compound-Complex Sentences

Twelve Angry Men is a play by Reginald Rose adapted from his 1954 teleplay of the same title for the CBS Studio One anthology television series. The drama depicts a jury forced to consider a homicide trial. At the beginning, they have a nearly unanimous decision of guilty, with a single dissenter of not-guilty, who throughout the play sows a seed of reasonable doubt. The story begins after closing arguments have been presented in the homicide case, as the judge is giving his instructions to the jury. As in most American criminal cases, the twelve men must unanimously decide on a verdict of "guilty" or "not guilty". (In the justice systems of nearly all American states, failure to reach a unanimous verdict, a so-called "hung jury", results in a mistrial.) The case at hand pertains to whether a young man murdered his own father. The jury is further instructed that a guilty verdict will be accompanied by a mandatory death sentence. These twelve then move to the jury room, where they begin to become acquainted with the personalities of their peers.