10-17-22
Never fold under pressure
Cover letter:
My audience is people who oppress others into being as senseless as them.
Meaningful insight I gained was that it’s cool to stay in school.
Concepts that have impacted my learning and writing practices are “ethos logos and pathos”. I’m implementing that in my rhetorical strategies.
This phase allowed me to voice my thoughts through images to my fellow people who have struggled like I have.
Three rhetorical strategies in Safwat Saleem’s Ted talk are pathos, logos, and imagery. The name of the article is “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent.” It pretty much explores the idea of how the criticisms of people online can be harsh, but not to let it deter you from being true to yourself. The first rhetorical strategy I found interesting was logos. He brings up an interesting point, that people have a tendency of immediately disliking someone or someone’s content, based simply on whether or not they have an accent. He does this by stating the facts that someone with a black sounding name is far less likely to receive a job, as opposed to someone who has a white sounding name. That information is relevant to his situation, because of the harsh things people were saying about the way he spoke. They had already decided they didn’t like his content because his accent was “hard to understand”. The author’s purpose was to subtly entertain, while informing everyone of the ignorance people like him are met with when they present themselves. He also brings light to the idea that discrimination is usually based in favoritism. He explains how people have more a desire to help people that they relate to, than to harm people they don’t relate to. I found this to be an interesting take on the topic. I usually find that discrimination is all about harming. I think his intended audience is the people who are making comments like the ones on his videos. He’s trying to address them so they can be aware of their ignorance. The second rhetorical strategy I found interesting was pathos. When he mentioned that he stopped using his voice in his animations because of the hate he received, it truly made me feel sorry for him. For him to feel as though he should suppress his identity for the sake of his viewers is rather depressing. However, it’s not just sadness that was provoked. He also used humor to keep the audience’s attention. It definitely worked. Everyone was interested in what he had to say and was fully invested. I feel like he used pathos perfectly to his advantage.
When he uses imagery, he makes us feel the way he felt in his situation. When he talks about how he was shy and people would make fun of him by saying “have you forgotten your name”, I can imagine how he must’ve felt in those situations. He says that the joke “never got old”, basically stating that the joke was a regular occurrence. I can sympathies with him. Being subjected to that kind of treatment must have been awful and detrimental to his mental health. That is what I believe the author was trying to accomplish by describing what happened, and literally showing it with images.
My argument is: people who don’t allow themselves to be manipulated by others even if they’re viewed as different, are truly commendable. I try to show this in the image I created for part 2. I used pathos to make the people who can relate feel empowered. My intended audience is everyone who forces people to conform to what they believe are societal norms. However, I do not believe my intended audience is ready, nor are they capable, of grasping such profound material. I also used logos. As you can observe, it is shown that the individual who uses proper grammar and behaves ends up being a rather successful fellow. On the other hand, the ones who partake in the tomfoolery are quite troublesome. I believe this is a pretty logical take, considering life is a lot like this. Furthermore, while the image is intended for the oppressors, I also try to appeal to the ones they’re trying to oppress. I understand what it’s like to be forced into changing the way you speak entirely. So in my image, I attempt to applaud those who have never been so easily swayed.
