Question

What kinds of figurative language does martin luther king JR. use in his speech to describe inequality and the work of the Civil Rights Movement? What is the impact of this language? Explain examples from at least two different paragraphs of the speech.

Answer 1

He used a metaphor with the line “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.”

“cash a check” means “take advantage of America's promise of opportunity.”

Metaphor is a figure of language that produces figurative meanings through comparative statements.