ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the model to discussion of three major political speeches that included persuasive rhetoric in some form. The first speech was broadcasted via radio, before television was invented; yet, the audience could have visualized the speaker, creating a multimodal message for it. Another important political speech is that of John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In it, he acknowledges to the US public and the world that the Soviet Union has placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, less than 100 miles from US mainland. The third address is that of Ronald Reagan to the people of Germany near the end of Soviet occupation of East Germany. Tensions of the Cold War had eased considerably by the time he spoke in Berlin to encourage the Soviet Union to remove physical barriers to reform and material artifacts of discord. The message there is to "tear down this wall", encouraging democracy and other political reforms away from communism.
