Abstract

Martin Luther King, Jr. is an acknowledged rhetorical master. Relatively few rhetorical analyses of his two principal speeches, "Dream" and "Mountaintop," have been published, however. One reason for this paucity, I contend, is the existentialistic nature of the speeches. Existentialism figures in these speeches because King studied existentialism and found it valuable, and because black pulpit oratory is compatible with existentialism. My thesis is that the existential psychology of Irvin Yalom yields insights into these speeches that would be difficult to obtain through traditional rhetorical methods. ;To demonstrate this thesis, I develop an existential psychological rhetorical perspective based on the major features of Yalom's psychology and along general Burkean lines. These features are death and transcendence, existential freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness. I then analyze the two speeches from this perspective. These analyses are compared to several traditional rhetorical analyses. ;My analysis reveals that existential features pervade the speeches. These features facilitate the identification of King with the audience and the audience among themselves. These collective identifications in turn facilitate the induction of cooperative action. In "Dream," the dream is transcendent and the pervasive theme is freedom. Other existential features play secondary roles. These features bind the audience in collective identification on the basis of American foundational principles and King's dream, which facilitates the induction of cooperative action toward freedom and equality. In "Mountaintop," death and transcendence are primary while other features are secondary. These features bind the audience in identification with King and with Biblical Israelites, which facilitates cooperative action toward the pursuit of full civil rights even in the event of King's death. ;I conclude that an existential psychological rhetorical perspective yields important insights into King's rhetoric that would be difficult to obtain through traditional rhetorical methods. This perspective supplements the application to rhetoric of existential philosophy by Campbell and of existential literature by Halloran. I suggest that this perspective potentially has broad general applicability both analytically and generatively