Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

“Tear Down This Wall”: How President Reagan ‘Framed’ The Soviet Union At Brandenburg Gate, Phillip Kostka

Undergraduate Review

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech at Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. This speech was on the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin, and in it, President Reagan praised the city and the people of Berlin, while at the same time decrying the government of East Berlin and the Soviet system. Reagan’s rhetorical performance that day is considered one of the one hundred greatest of the twentieth century. The question is what made Reagan’s speech so compelling? This paper seeks to answer this question by examining how Reagan framed the situation at Brandenburg gate.