Bias and Rhetorical Devices

I did this assignment on the Citizen Kane speech. I feel that not only did the campaigner show a bias towards Jim Gettys, but Citizen Kane showed political bias towards him as well. Citizen Kane belittled Jim Gettys’ ability to run the state to his fullest potential. He stated that he needed to point out and make known the dishonesty and downright villainy, of Boss Jim Gettys’ political machine that is in complete control of the state. Another form of bias used was Ethnic bias to describe the citizens of the state as “the working man” and “the underfed,” just to name a few. I think that this speech has one main fallacy, ad hominen. Citizen Kane attacks Jim Gettys throughout his entire speech rather than attacking the issues at hand. A rhetorical device that was used was using the word “boss” as a euphemism to describe Jim Gettys as the boss of the state being a villainous political character.
    One of the first arguments that Citizen Kane made in his speech was that Jim Gettys was evil and dishonest. This in itself makes the listener to automatically assume that Citizen Kane feels that he is the best at this job and that no one else could do it any better. The next argument that is obvious in this speech is that Citizen Kane states that he will win in every poll to be elected. He can have no proof of this. As we know how with the recounts of Florida, there can be many factors to effect an election from faulty equipment or miscounting the ballots. The next argument that Citizen Kane makes is that he is already hard at work keeping his promises but in the beginning of his speech he said that he did not have any campaign promises because he did not have any chances of winning the election before hand. The last argument that Citizen Kane makes is that when elected that he will do everything in his power to get Jim Gettys prosecuted and convicted of his “evil” doings. Not having any proof of this makes it very hard for him to be able to say that he can keep these...