Fellow citizen, pardon me, and allow me -- One important function of any discourse in an Aristotlean model is using language to construct a collective. In many cases, the goal is to establish the speaker and the audience as members of the same group to better persuade the listeners that some objective is mutually beneficial. In this speech, Douglass uses the phrase "fellow citizens" here and later in his speech to underscore that commonality.

The simple truth, however, is that the slaves were not perceived as equal. Despite his status as a freed slave, he asks pardon and permission from his audience to speak. The gulf between the two groups becomes immediately apparent.