ChambleeAmanda_RHE
Transcript of ChambleeAmanda_RHE
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Stites thinks that this is simply the new and advanced way of communicating with others in this
generation. She also thinks that the old way of doing things, the face-to-face interaction, is
worthless and more difficult to get across what one wants to promote.
In the article This Is How We Live written by Ellen DeGeneres and published by Reffix
in the bookTechnological Somnambulism compiled by Langdon Winner, a quite different
approach is taken to the world of technology. DeGeneres thinks that technology as a whole is
hurting the world; and she is referring to more than just computers and electronics. She goes
through several examples in an effort to show that the main effect of technology is laziness.
People cannot even roll down their windows because it takes too much work, and therefore, a
button had to be made to do the work for us. She thinks that advancements are being made in
areas that had nothing wrong with them before such as portable yogurt. She claims that Go-Gurt
is a useless invention because there was nothing wrong with the portability of yogurt to begin
with. She gives off the impression that our world has become obsessed with advancement and is
willing to change anything in order to make it better or more efficient, even if it was completely
fine to begin with.
These two articles have differing views on technology. Stites side is convinced that
technology is the way to go when dealing with everyday activities such as communicating with
one another. DeGeneres side says that it has a bad influence on the common teenager,
employee, student, etc. When working with a controversial issue, it is important that the
presenter is completely connected to his or her audience. In an effort to appeal to their audiences,
both of the authors use rhetoric in order to get their opinions across. Although Stites uses an
interesting appeal to pathos by taking the reader through a day of her life and showing him or her
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the importance of technology, DeGeneres appeal to pathos as well as logos is much stronger in
getting the audience emotionally involved as well as taking them step by step through her logic.
When assessing articles through rhetorical analysis, three main criteria come to the
surface: pathos, logos, and ethos. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and, therefore, is concerned
with capturing the audiences attention, appealing to their emotions, gaining their trust, then
logically showing them the side one is promoting through reasoning and examples to prove an
argument. If this is to be done and done effectively, then one must appeal to one of three if not
all three of the criteria. Therefore, Someone To Watch Over Me and This Is How We Live
will both be analyzed using the above criteria.
In order for an audience to be engaged in whatever the presenter is trying to convey, it is
important that their attention is captured and held on to; and one way to do this is through pathos.
Pathos is a way of connecting to people through emotions as well as storytelling. Stites uses it in
the form of storytelling by taking her reader with her through a day of her life: I consistently
trade actual human contact for the more reliable emotional high of smiles on MySpace, winks on
Match.com and pokes on Facebook (Stites). This way, she can show the reader how important
technology is on a day-to-day basis rather than just telling him or her. This forms a connection
between the reader and Stites and that can become very powerful because Stites can use this new
found trust to persuade her readers. By pulling readers into her own life experiences, she can
control how they feel about technology by showing them select instances in her life to which it
applies most. On the other hand, DeGeneres uses emotion to capture her audience. Because she
is a comedian, she can use her humor in order to engage people by giving them examples such as
If you want to know the truth, I blame the microwave for most of our problems. Anything that
gets food that hot without fire is from the devil. If you dont believe me, put a Hot Pocket in your
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microwave for three or four minutes, then pop that thing in your mouth. If thats not Hell, my
friend, I dont know what is. (DeGeneres 588). This is a very funny argument that captures
attention as well as proving a point; that technology is evil. The audience will laugh at this
example because it is a common instance which most of the people in the audience have
experienced themselves and therefore realize the point she is making. By coming up with
common examples that most people have experienced, DeGeneres can easily form a bond of
trust with her audience. Her celebrity status also helps her case because people are more inclined
to trust celebrities because of their widely accepted credibility.
Once the audience is engaged in the speaker, the next thing would be to logically lay out
the argument for the audience to make sense of and either agree or disagree with it. In order to do
this, one must appeal to logos. Logos is made up of logic, facts, reasoning, and evidence. Stites
uses it when she talks about how technology is better than face-to-face interaction. When one is
online, everyone has bulletproof social armor which protects them from awkwardness,
embarrassment, and unwanted encounters (Stites). These statements are common disadvantages
of face-to-face interaction that the reader can easily identify with, and can be seen as evidence to
support her claim that interaction on the internet is better and less damaging then that in a social
setting. To make her point even more clear, she goes further by saying, Besides, eye contact
isnt all its cracked up to be and facial expressions can be so hard to control (Stites). These
statements seem to come from personal experience and therefore can be used as more evidence.
When DeGeneres uses logos, however, she tends to use logic more so than just evidence. This
makes her argument more persuasive because she walks the audience through her opinion step
by step until they reach her point. She also reverses it by laying out a typical scenario and
showing how it is completely illogical in a certain context. For example, she brings up cell
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phones that one can talk on without using any hands, which may seem like a good idea, but then
she puts the reader in the scenario of a car. It does not become apparent that this is an illogical
situation until she says, chances are, if you need both of your hands to do something, your brain
should be in on it too (DeGeneres 592). Then the reader is aware of how bad an idea the
technology was to begin with because it influences precarious behavior.
The third component of rhetorical appeal is ethos. This can be used to form trust between
the audience and the person trying to promote the idea. It is useful because in a way it guarantees
that the audience will pick the side of the presenter if it is done properly; and after all that hard
work, who would not want the audience to be on his or her side? Stites uses ethos when she
describes all of her daily activities and how in tune she is with technology. This gives her a
superior position and the reader is more likely to believe what she has to say about technology
because it seems like she is very knowledgeable about the subject. DeGeneres uses ethos within
her comedy act. Comedians usually get their material from personal experience and through her
examples such as the Hot Pocket example or the one about moving sidewalks in airports gives
the reader a sense that she knows what she it talking about because she has witnessed it first
hand. The reader also gets a sense of her intelligence and education through her use of logic.
Also, her being a celebrity gives the audience a sense of trust right off the bat and DeGeneres
easily uses that to her advantage. The audience expects her to meet certain qualifications and by
giving them what they want, she is setting them up to trust her and believe her further down the
line as well.
With every controversial issue, there are always two sides of the story. One major
weakness with Stites article is that it is so narrow-minded. It shows only one viewpoint
throughout the whole article and that is a world obsessed with technology. She only mentions
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once how life was or could be without technology, and this is where her paper falls short. If she
could show more examples of how life would be lacking without technological advancements,
then she could probably make a stronger argument. One weakness with DeGeneres article is the
riskiness of the comedic approach. One thing that needs to be realized is that when comedy is
used as emotional appeal, it is more for entertainment rather than trying to promote change.
People can get emotionally engaged in the presentation by laughing, but that does not necessarily
make them want to go out and change their lives around. It may, in fact, overshadow the
seriousness of the argument; which would be very detrimental to the person trying to make their
point. What saves her argument, however, is the fact that she uses logic along with the comedy in
order to stir up a moral dilemma in the audience. Without the logic though, it is just another
comedy performance.
In conclusion, the articles Someone To Watch Over Me written by Theodora Stites,
and This Is How We Live written by Ellen DeGeneres, do a fine job of persuading the
audience with rhetorical techniques; however, DeGeneres article is stronger in all three
rhetorical categories. She is the more trustworthy source because of her status in America, her
arguments are captivatingly funny as well as logical, and she does a great job of using personal
experience and pulling several examples from her life that are easy to connect with. Therefore, it
is my pleasure to recommend This Is How We Live to be added to the collection of rhetorical
pieces for the next edition ofThey Say I Say.
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Works Cited
Stites, Theodora. "Someone To Watch Over Me." The New York Times. The New York Times,
9 July 2006. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.
Winner, Langdon. Technological Somnambulism. Reffix: Reading and Composing
Culture. Ed. Caterine G. Latterell. Boston and New York: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2006.
588-592. Print.