On December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces.
The next day, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the United States Congress with his memorable “a date which will live in infamy” speech.
This speech had two purposes:
- To urge Congress to formally declare war on Japan (which they did just minutes later), and
- To rally the American people to support the war effort.
In this speech analysis article, we focus on Roosevelt’s choice of words to see how they helped communicate his message. Then, from these choices, we extract 5 key speech writing lessons for you.
This is the latest in a series of speech critiques here on Six Minutes.