Analyzing Adichie's Ted Talk

“The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” said Chimamanda Adichie in her TED talk speech seven years ago. She is spreading awareness about the value of working against spreading a single story in a culture and community. She is correct because people should not be influencing a single story to represent a whole community of many different stories.

The following video The Danger of a Single story is an very interesting recording. First, when I looked at the title I thought it was going to be boring or about a women that is in danger but then when I start listening to the tape it became more exciting. The Danger of a Single story is very much related to the achievement gap across the world throughout different countries.

A single story is a limited viewpoint. A single story reduces cultures and people into a simple stereotype.

Is the FBI as righteous as they would like us to think? In the Ted Talk titled, “Trevor Aaronson: How this FBI strategy is actually creating US-based terrorists,” the orator describes in his speech how FBI agents worked hand-in-hand with individuals who would eventually be arrested in sting operations, on terrorism charges. To tackle the complex topic of his speech, the speaker starts off with his thesis, a bold statement accusing the FBI of being for more terrorist plots than any terrorist group on Earth (Aaronson). On top of this, the speakers thesis doubles as his hook, since his Canadian audience would assume that the FBI worked as fighters of crime, and not purveyors of it. To back up his claim, Aaronson describes multiple cases, as well as shows multiple pictures to go along with his stories. The way Aaronson blends stats and stories together effectively explains how the FBI creates terrorists in the United States.

This Ted Talk served as a basis for all our essays. Chimamanda Adichie is an African writer who is from Nigeria, but studied in America. In this talk, there is a lot of information about, what she calls, the curse of a single story. This means that if you only have one story about a certain subject, then you have only a limited view of it. Adichie talks about how dangerous this can be, because you are perceiving something hat is most likely more complex and has more information to it, as something that is simple and has one view towards it. I used this to compare my main topic of gap years to. I used

Today, the society’s lives and cultures are composed of many overlapping stories. A single story confines a corner of the world to a generalized stereotype. Chimamanda Adichie in TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, addresses that “if you hear a single story about a person or a country we risk a critical understanding.” Adichie also states, “a single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not what they are untrue, but they are incomplete.” Adichie believes everyone is guilty in creating single stories and they are dangerous because they rob people from their identities and dignity. Diversity of stories and possibilities are things that should be read and discussed. Single stories are dangerous because they make the differences in people stand out and the single story an incomplete description.

Great authors portray their ideas in multiple ways to reach out their message to the present audience. As Tim Urban in his Ted Talk ¨Inside the mind of a master procrastinator¨ he discussed what the thinking behind procrastination leads to through his own experiences, presenting in a way to make the audience laugh, and to convince them that everyone procrastinates in life. Any great writer incorporates ethos, pathos and logos within their writing, speech or even presentation. Tim did an excellent job portraying to his audience these rhetorical strategies which earn him the right to be listened to respectively.

In the Ted Talk given by Hetain Patel, Hetain uses the stereotypes of his physical appearance to his advantage against the audience in order to help establish his theme of the Ted Talk, which is perception. He begins the Ted Talk speaking in Chinese mandarin, while a translator sits beside him and translates what he is saying to the audience. About a minute into the ted talk the translator reveals that Hetain was born and raised near Manchester England and that he is actually repeating the same paragraph of Chinese mandarin each time he is speaking to the audience. He actually knows English but he chose to speak in mandarin so he could “avoid any assumptions made about him due to his northern accent.” Basically wanted to avoid others using

To inspire change in an audience well-set in their ways, sometimes an argument has to be just as bold as the bold ideas presented. This robust approach creates can present a well-crafted, effective argument, for it confronts the audience with a strong ethical stance and difficult to ignore facts, forcing the audience to undergo an examination of their own beliefs. Peter Singer utilizes this form of argument while using dramatic hypothetical situations and statistics in his essay, which ultimately proves to be effective than his more passive TEDtalk speech. Singer throughout his essay establishes strong logos, starting off with describing the findings of philosophy professor Peter Unger. Paraphrasing some of Unger's findings, he describes how

The audience has made up their mind on David?s presentation in the initial 7-10 seconds in front of the high school staff (Bretag, Crossman and Bordia 2009, p. 195). After five minutes of David?s presentation; he noticed that most of the audience was looking bored on his sales pitch. What turned out badly with David's presentation is that he did not have a clear structure in his speech with appropriate signposts and transitions to keep his audience on track (Laws 2000, p. 67). He did not interact, and a lack of rapport with his audience. David forgets that he also communicate without speaking (Bretag et.al., 2009, p. 204). David was not able to convey his approaches through his body language, and non-verbal communication such

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, The Power of a Single Story, examines the power of story, both as a tool to create stereotypes and as a tool to teach people about the complexity of humanity (Adichie). In her words: “stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Adichie 17:24). Adichie emphasizes that a single story obscures the complexity of the people supposedly represents. By attributing one story, one stereotype to an entire population, you eliminate the possibility of complexity or humanity for the object of the story (Adichie 04:49). The power of story comes from “how they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told,”(Adichie 09:37). It is this power that

Before African writers emerged, the world viewed Africa as “‘the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization”(Adeche, 1977, p.3) Joseph Conrad’s idea of a civilized nation is Europe, but his ignorance towards other forms of civilizations, lead Conrad to publish Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s interpretation of Africa in Heart of Darkness, being the only one at the time, created the daunting beastial stereotype of Africa. Though Conrad’s story does not entirely embody Africa today, his opinions still sway the minds of Americans today. Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie encounter a like situation where she fell victim to the single story of Africa. When arriving at an American Adichie’s roommate immediately feels pity for her. When Adichie questions her assumptions she highlights the impoverishment present parts of Africa based on a newspaper article she previously read. Adichie roommate's lack of knowledge prompted her to form a false opinion about African based on one story. When we only embrace one story, we fail to embrace the stories of

Viewing the single story by Chimamanda Adichie was very interesting and enlightening. My interpretation of this story is, making an assumption about ones story or a group of people. Some may think that this can create stereotypes about certain people. When the story is told, it makes one story seem to be the only story. You can think that they are not complete stories, just making assumptions about people you do not know.

From the TED Talk video “The Danger of a Single Story,” I think that the speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wanted to tell us that we need to read more and know different stories about one place because there are more than one story exist. We should not judge other without knowing themselves. Furthermore, she said that we should not easily believe everything we heard from media because they only give us one impression. I especially felt close to her when she described how she felt after she realized her American roommate teetered her as African not Nigerian. (4:13) Moreover, she had only a single story about Africa. (4:49) Those paragraph remind me when I was in college in New York, my American classmates did not know the differences between Japanese and Chinese or

Over time, we have developed more and more advanced technology from radios to robots, this has impacted us in a way no one would imagine. In Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, but alone?,” Turkle clarifies how technology is redefining human connection. She points out that our cellphones are keeping us away from interacting with society and has a more significant influence on our communication in person than online. In addition, we tend to seek social media as a way of comfort and attention, and the more we are using our phones the more isolated and alone we become. Is technology really redefining human connection?