Rhetorical Analysis Of Malcolm Gladwell's 'Tedtalk'

All in all, Gladwell helps paint a picture of what’s said to be behind the locked door of the subconscious. He uses repetition and rhetorical questions to stress how thin-slicing plays a crucial part in our world. The power of our minds are limitless but Gladwell is still searching for the key to unlocking the truth of our unconscious

An ineffective device used by Gladwell was his use of repetition of evidence and failure to acknowledge counterexamples by forcing the reader into thinking that Gladwell’s theory is the only one possible to be correct. The lack of acknowledgment towards counterexamples thrusts the audience into thinking that Gladwell’s opinion is the only viable one. “Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles biography”, “nonstop show, hour after hour”, “Here is John Lennon”, and “playing all night long” are examples of repetition of evidence because the author already established that the

Another way Clinton uses pathos is when he tries to comfort the people who have lost loved ones by saying, “You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything.” Clinton lets the audience know that they have people that will help them through this hard time and they have the nation behind them: “You have certainly not lost America, for we will stand with you for as many tomorrows as it takes.” Clinton ultimately reaches his goal of comforting his audience by using ethos and pathos strategies throughout his speech.

To start with, Gladwell uses ethos, an appeal to ethics, as a device to effectively explain how

In any powerful speech, the speaker communicates and relates directly to his or her audience. Elie Wiesel does a superb job of doing this in his Perils of Indifference speech, given in April 1999. His use of pathos

Ethos is conveyed by using “my friends” to show how Wiesel is attempting to persuade the trust of the audience (Wiesel, 1999/16, p. 80). The author uses historic facts to show how much indifference there is in the world and why there is a need for vigilance in the face of evil. Pathos is pulling on one’s heart strings because it is, after all, easier to look away from one’s pain and misery and just carry on with everyday life. As Helen Keller once said, “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.” (Simran, 2017, Random musings, para.

“There is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success” (Gladwell 18). In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell is trying to convince his audience that they misunderstand how people become successful. Many believe one only needs hard work and determination in order to achieve success. However, Gladwell complicates this idea by explaining that hard work and determination is not how people become successful and instead, it is all about the opportunities one is given that decides if he or she is successful or not. Gladwell uses the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos in order to persuade his audience to accept his idea of the process of becoming successful.

Gladwell used Aristotle’s techniques of rhetoric, by appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos successfully to further persuade his audience of his argument. First, Gladwell established his character by displaying himself as an intellectual, honest, and of good intentions through his writing style and word choice. Secondly, Gladwell masterfully used pathos to emotionally influenced his audience from their interests and concerns about success to make his argument appeal to his specific audience. Third, Gladwell utilized logos to make his argument strong without emotional and trustworthy factors interfering, and his case stood on its own. Gladwell also mentioned problems and his offered solutions which would alter his thesis of success through a hockey example that is trying to fix the age gap concerning development, “We could set up two or even three hockey leagues, divided up by month of birth. Let the players develop on separate tracks and then pick all-star teams,” (33). As a society, we must change the pattern of success and prove Gladwell’s thesis wrong; we can help one another to be the community required so everyone can prosper and create a sense of equity. Through Gladwell’s efficient use of establishing an image to

He also includes a lot of emotional parts throughout the speech this is effective as it may get an emotional response from the audience this happens when he says “Your loved ones were daring and brave” and “It is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen” this is a good use of pathos as it does connect to the emotional feelings of the viewer.

How does Ray Comfort use ethos, pathos, and logos to make his argument more effective, and to not offend his audience and make them walk away?

If anyone knew Paul Harvey, you could tell by his voice that he was a down to earth kind of man. He always spoke softly and with great eloquence. It was just a part of his personality. When delivering this speech, Paul was no different. He connected with the audience members and enhanced his appeals to ethos and pathos just through his language choices and tone. The speech contains anecdote after anecdote, which strengthens the rhetorical devices that make the speech’s message effective. Paul uses ethos to build up the character of the farmer and pathos to emotionally relate the farmer to each member of the audience. These tactics greatly impact Harvey’s speech.

For instance in the excerpt written by Jane Addams, she uses a lot of rhetoric when talking about the necessity for social settlements. In this excerpt there is one rhetoric in particular that stands out, which is pathos. Pathos stirs up feeling of sorrow, sympathy, and pity and that's exactly what Jane Addams does. Jane Addams put as lot of feeling into this piece of writing and that definitely helps build up her argument. When you read this you can get a

Throughout King’s speech, he uses the rhetorical mode, pathos, to give the audience an ambience of strong emotions such as sympathy. For example, whites had

Straight forward tone makes connection with the readers by generating emotional responses; sarcasm and acrid words sharply criticize his contradicted targets; concessive tones implicate his unwillingness to support mocking individuals (which is part of his argument); skepticism, which is more complicated, shows indifference towards those words that come from nothing but threaten people; and a serious and formal tone touch the topic with deeper consideration. The usage of tone is so powerful in the essay that it makes us feel that we are not just reading an essay, but are instead recognizing a social problem and rethinking

Gladwell takes about the concept of the inverted u-curve. The inverted u-curve show us how too little or too much of something can be a bad thing. The best spot to be on the inverted u-curve is the middle. The middle is the peak of performance, it’s a balance between too much and too little. When we experience too much or too little and we end up suffering, sometimes severely. The left hand side of the graph shows the situations where there is too little of something, where people are under-challenged or the unproductive side. As you move up the graph you, you start moving to the middle of the goldy locks. The middle of the graph is at peak effectiveness. That’s where the magic happens, everything is balanced and stable. This is where happiness