Coca Cola Rhetorical Analysis

The unsigned article written for the Lebanon Daily News, “Coca-Cola’s Multilingual ‘America’ Ad Didn’t Hit Any Wrong Notes” brings to light the outrage sparked from a Coca-Cola advertisement displayed during the Superbowl. The author discusses the contents of the advertisement, followed shortly by the ludicrous flood of responses on social media, claiming those living in America should speak only English. The author concludes that despite what backlash the commercial may have received online, that it was successful in achieving their goals for the ad to reach a wide audience, and maintain their attention.

The author asserts ethos by poking lighthearted fun at those responses, while also reminding us via the statistics of a Huffington Post article that there are currently 381 languages spoken in the United States. They clarify that while it is important to know English while living in America, those whose first language was not English should not have to leave

This argument is somewhat effective because the author is able to backup their claims with valid statistics while also appearing honest to the audience by joking around with them, as you would one-on-one with a friend. At the same time, it remains ineffective, because if the goal of the author is to convince their readers that they are correct about the Coca-Cola commercial being a good one, they are only convincing those who are already in agreement with the author, instead of persuading those on the other side of the argument to consider the author’s view. They reject those people by calling their online reactions things like “irrational ‘Murricans” and “ape-like.” Any readers who might have initially thought the ad was bad will only be more sure in their beliefs here for several reasons: 1) the author is directly insulting the readers they want to persuade, and 2) these statements are made before the author backs up their claims, but any offended reader