Critical Discourse Analysis. Kennedy's speech "Ich bin ein Berliner"

John F. Kennedy delivered this speech during his state visit to West Berlin in 1963; the ‘Berlin Wall’ was just built. In this fraught political situation, Kennedy talked about freedom and justice, contrasting the ‘free world’ to the ‘communist world’.

He addressed the Berliners directly but he obliquely referred also to ‘the world of freedom’. However, he tried to captivate the Berliners repeating several times the famous sentence: "Ich bin ein Berliner", I am a Berliner. He decided to pronounce these words in German in order to pose himself at the same level of each Berliner. Moreover, he said that he was proud to say “I am a Berliner”. This escamotage brought him the confidence of Berliners: ordinary people were placed at the same level of the President of the USA. In fact, the audience expressed its sentiment of togetherness applauding after every sentence said in German. This rhetorical device is called ‘claptraps’ and it is a strategy to catch applause. Besides the use of German, another Kennedy’s claptrap was when he referred to the sad situation of Berlin, especially after the sentence “Let they came to Berlin”. He utilized this expression in the comparison between the world of freedom and the communist world in order to discredit those who thought that the communism could be a concrete alternative. The first part of the speech is focused on this division, expressed also in the dichotomy between on the one hand ‘freedom and democracy’ and on the other ‘the wall’. Kennedy wanted to point out that it was impossible to work with the communist because the communist system was dictatorial and it did not bring prosperity and wealth. Berlin was the most palpable example of the difference between these two worlds because both of them coexisted in the same city.

In the second part of his speech, Kennedy shifted the attention from Berlin to the whole world. However, the Berliners still had a role: they lived in a ‘defended island of freedom’ but they had to concur to the exportation of freedom in East Berlin, East Germany and ‘everywhere in the world, for all mankind’. In this second part Kennedy’s will in the join of the two Berlin and the two Germany filtered out, because ‘freedom is indivisible and when one man is in slave, all of us aren’t free’. In this sentence we can find both the contraposition between the two worlds and the desire to defeat the despotic one in order to export freedom and democracy everywhere. Then, Kennedy talked about the future and the hope to live in a world of freedom, justice and peace. 

Kennedy’s speech is organized in three sections: in the first one he addressed the Berliners and he reported the gloomy political, social and economical situation of Berlin. In the second one, the contraposition between the two worlds is no more referred only to the local situation of Berlin but to the international situation: in fact, Kennedy talked about Europe and the whole world. His desire to destroy the communism is quite clear. This wish is expressed also in the third part, when Kennedy talked about the future and the desire to live in a free world. He took his responsibility to bring freedom but he also encouraged the Berliners and “the world of freedom” in doing so. He expressed also his personal conviction that ‘that day will come’. The self-confidence expressed by the President brought him prolonged applauses. The speech ends as it started: “…as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner”. The roundness of Kennedy’s speech gives a sense of completeness and links the three parts of the speech together.

Lexical choice: the words freedom, justice, peace are repeated several times. This reveals us that the speech is focused on these topics. These words are used to describe the world embodied in Kennedy, while the adjective evil is used to describe the communist system. Communist had had to build up a wall in order to prevent that people leave them, while Americans didn’t. Here Kennedy used the first person plural pronoun, “I” plus a group, in order to stress that the lifestyle and the values that they offer are better than the ones posed by the communists, embodied in the Wall.

Kennedy used also the first person singular pronoun “I” in order to show a clear sense of personal involvement. In fact, at the very beginning of the speech he repeated three times that he is proud ‘to come here….to visit the Federal Republic… come again if he (the Chancellor) ever needs it’ . This is also an high impact ‘list-of-three’, which is a rhetorical device used in political speeches in order to elicit approval. The three-part list can have different words with a similar general meaning, for example: ‘… democracy and freedom and progress’ . This list-of-three implies that democracy, instead of communism, is the condition to be free and wealthy.

The repetition of ‘I am a Berliner’ had a great impact on the audience and this statement played an important role in the fusion between the speaker and the audience.

The repetition of the sentence ‘let they come to Berlin’ is another three-part-list and it gives a sense of unity and completeness at the first part of the speech that could be read as a critic to the communism. This sentence is said also in German.

Another three-part-list used by Kennedy is when he praised the quality of the citizens of West Berlin: ‘… the force and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin’. This was also a ‘claptrap’: when Kennedy wanted huge applauses he had only to praise the qualities of West Berliners. Another one is when Kennedy expressed his desire for the reunification of Berlin accusing the communist system to ‘…separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters…’ . This is also a three-part-list. Implication: the communist system is wicked because does not allow people who wants to stay together to join each other.

The reunification of Germany in Europe is another important issue of the speech and when Kennedy talked about it, he repeated several times the word free. The main line of the speech is that the communists do not allow people to be free, while freedom is one of Americans’ values: ‘the right to be free, to live in peace and justice’.   

Susanna Gallini.