Toastmasters 2015
Mohammed Qahtani’s speech “The Power of Words” uses rhetorical strategies to get his point across. This speech also has a powerful message about words and their influence. The dominant rhetorical strategy throughout the speech is pathos, drawing on the emotions of the audience; Mohammed’s main idea is that words have the power to change a person a see a certain point of view. At the start of the video Mohammed shares a story about him telling his friends that diabetes kills more than smoking. Most of his friends believed him and two even started smoking, even though he made up the claim. They believed him because, “Words, when said and articulated in the right way, can change someone’s mind.” Pathos is a dominant rhetorical
