Final answer:
Angelina Grimke Weld's shift to the first person in the second paragraph of her speech serves to give personal testimony, strengthening emotional appeal, and challenging conventional expectations of women's public discourse.
Step-by-step explanation:
The structural change from second person to first person in the second paragraph of Angelina Grimke Weld's speech highlights a shift from a general discussion to a personal testimony, providing authenticity and emotional engagement. By using the first person, Grimke Weld inserts her own experiences and insights, thereby enhancing the speech's pathos and establishing a direct connection with her audience. This switch could reflect a rhetorical strategy to make her argument more compelling, as personal stories often resonate more deeply than abstract ones. Moreover, the use of the first person can be seen as a way to claim authorship and authority over her experiences, challenging conventional expectations of women's roles and voices in the public sphere during her time. This was particularly effective given her background, as she was speaking from personal knowledge, being the daughter of a prominent slave owner and having married into an influential abolitionist family.