The Tipping Point Essay

After reading The Tipping Point, I have learned many important “tips” in marketing. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, identifies three important concepts based on his deep studies throughout his life: “the Law of the Few”, “the Stickiness Factor”, and “the Power of Context”. These factors play essential roles in deciding if a particular trend will work in widespread popularity. He makes these concepts interesting and understandable.

He asks, “How are human beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world are few and distant? Or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web? (Page 34)” Gladwell doesn’t actually expect readers to come up with an answer, but he does realize that readers wouldn’t consider these questions had he not put the questions in their heads to start with. By doing this he allows his audience to form their own opinions on the questions asked before he reveals what answers the questions were originally designed to expose. Gladwell effectively uses rhetorical questions to get the audience interested early on, therefore making the information given in the selection more important.

Right away the readers get interested in learning what the then thousand hour rule is about. Gladwell reviews the lives of extremely successful people and how they have had success. There are many ways in which logos are used in Outliers. Gladwell viewed children in Berlin playing the violin and saw that kids having ten thousand hours of practice, were proven to be better at playing the violin, than kids with less than ten thousand hours of practice. He also took a look at Bill gates, which dropped out of college and started a very successful company, called Microsoft. Bill Gates had thousands of hours of practice in programming and other abilities learned through his short years at college. There are no shortcuts at becoming great; everything can only be achieved with lots of practice and hard work.

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

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell looks at a number of social epidemics and analyzes their build up to the point where they tip. “Tipping” is that point where an epidemic booms, or grows, to its maximum potential. Gladwell begins defining “tipping” with a literal example of the famous shoes, Hush Puppies. Once considered old-fashioned, Hush Puppies experienced a social boom in the mid-90s when hipsters in New York made them trendy again. Gladwell continues explaining “tipping” with a medical epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Gladwell introduces us to three essential rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few says a key factor in epidemics is the role of the messenger: it

As Gladwell conducts his argument, he writes with confidence and authority, which expresses his passion and knowledge about the subject. Gladwell’s poise throughout the essay, combined with his resume, establishes his credibility and constructs a rhetorically effective argument. Being a best-selling author as well as a professional

Not only is Ethos and Pathos used effectively in the speech, Logos is as well. Though the use of Logos is used much more indirectly than either of the latter, it is still an important component of the speech. Adm. Mcraven uses Logos by providing support for his statements and lessons taught throughout the speech. For example, Adm. Mcraven explained how one individual could ultimately change the lives of eight-hundred million people by only changing the lives of ten in their lifetime. He supports this claim with mathematical reasoning and evidence, “Ask.Com says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime. That's a lot of folks. But, if every one of you changed the lives of just 10 people — and each one of those folks changed the lives of another 10 people — just 10 — then in five generations — 125 years — the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.”

In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch includes many examples of ethos, pathos, and logos in his closing argument. It is most likely that the best device that would be used to sway the jury would be logos. Because the facts in the Ewell’s testimony do not add up in accordance to the testimony of Tom Robinson, using more reasonable evidence would be more persuading to the jury. Although logos is a very crucial part of this trial, the devices ethos and pathos are also important.

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

In The Coddling of the American Mind, logos used throughout the article. Logos is an appeal to logic from the author, and is a way of persuading an audience by reason. One logos example is the different generation statement the article provided. Childhoods has changed a significant amount during the past generation. The generation growing up before and a little after the 80’s remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unsupervised by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to keep themselves busy and learn from their OWN mistakes. They made this claim because parents from this generation are more protective about their children. It is hard to see kids out in the streets riding

Logos is the first rhetorical device that will be examined. It simply means logic. An example of logos is when Douglass says "There are seventy-two crimes in the state of virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he may be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to

The last strategy Jill Lepore uses in her essay is Pathos. She intentionally tries to connect with her audience not just with reasoning but with emotion, the emotion that drives us to want to change something that we feel is wrong and that should be changed. In the rest of her essay she used pathos and logos at the same time but we will analyze Pathos. While quoting another source, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” by

4) How would you relate “the law of the few” to a transition management team?

For example, in lines 69-76, King answers the critics questioning of his use of direct action and marches to protest against segregation. He states that “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored” (71-73). This explanation is so broken down and easy to understand that it would not make sense to disregard it and agree with the critics. Another instance in which King uses logos is when, as mentioned above, he references the Holocaust and Hitler’s mistreatment of Jews in lines 181 to 185. He discusses how the definitions of “illegal” and “legal” were skewed during that horrific time period. King connects how the definitions in Germany during the Holocaust are similar to the definitions during the Civil Rights Movement about segregation. This appeals to the critics and readers logos because it forces them to think about how terrible the Holocaust was and the treatment of Jews, and realize that the Jews and the African-Americans were being treated in a similar sense. The way King uses logos, is very effective because he makes his ideas and points have sound reasoning while politely diminishing the reasoning of the

What can one consider being a tipping point in a situation. Is it when a situation changes from bad to worse? Could it be when it changes from good to better? Or could it be from when it changes from a bad situation and all of a sudden it turns around and becomes good? In my essay we are going to explore the tipping point from four different authors: Malcolm Gladwell, Mary G. King, Lynne M. Anderson, and Christine M. Pearson. From subject of: hush puppies, teen suicide, crime, smoking, incivility in the workplace and the black women’s breakthrough into clerical work. There could be many reasons why there were tipping