Copywriting Evaluation Essay
The purpose of this essay is to critically engage with the late Leonardo Dicaprio’s speech at United Nations. Persuasion was seen as a necessary skill for leadership and democracy, where the speakers can produce logical arguments to persuade his audie support or oppose a particular point of view (Fawkes, 2006). The persuasive copy’s main premise was to call on individuals, industries and governments concerned at climate change and call for action from the leaders of the world to put a stop to climate change. As the UN Messenger of peace, Leonardo Dicaprio gave us a persuasively and forcefully speech which can show his excellent presentation skills and temperament, therefore, there are many aspects of this speech
…show more content…
The audience can be persuaded through their emotion (Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 2005). High pathos makes the audience more likely to be persuaded (Dlugan, 2007b). On the one hand, in this speech, Leonardo invoked the fear of audience by quoting the scientific community’s prognosis, ‘If we do not act together, we will surely perish’. Later in the speech, he listed the specific actions and asked the leaders for action. He also cited the statement of the chief of the US navy, ‘climate change is our single greatest security threat’, which also trigger the fear of the audience. On the other hand, Dicaprio said solving this crisis is not a question of politics, but our moral obligation, which can inspire a strong sense of responsibility and mission. Through triggering audience emotion, Dicaprio can make his audience act together and face the crisis of climate …show more content…
If the messages aim to involve the receiver in internal reasoning or elaboration, then it has to ensure that there is a good range of arguments to support the message (Fawkes 2006). Firstly, in the speech, Dicaprio said he play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. Hence, as an actor, he pretends for a living. People always consider that climate change were a fiction which just happen to someone else’s planet. Hence, those people pretend for a living. Through making a convincing and logic analogy between his actor career and the people who refuse to acknowledge climate change is real, he can make the audience recognize the fact. More importantly, Toulmin( 1958) suggested that effective message uses evidence such as data, opinions, or case study to make a claim. In this speech, Dicaprio listed various undeniable climate events such as droughts, acidifying of the ocean, and ice-sheet melting as the evidence make the audience acknowledge climate change is a fact, not rhetoric. His greatest appeal to logos makes this speech attractive and effective. Moreover, Paralinguistics, which do not involve words, play an important part in spoken communication and add emphasis or shades of meaning to what people say (BBC,
Some of the great philosophers known to man, Aristotle and Plato, wanted the ability to persuade. Aristotle wanted to be able to persuade people with a good amount of time, wisdom, and knowledge so that people could see the good of something. His student, Plato, wanted to be able to persuade people quickly and more affectively by persuading them in a very short time frame. So in order to quickly persuade people, Plato proposed an argument by expressing an idea and supporting it with rhetorical evidence. From Plato’s teaching came three types of rhetorical evidence; logos, which argues by logic; pathos, which argues by the use of sympathy and empathy; and ethos, which argues by the use of ethical appeals. Today the three types of rhetorical analysis can be found everywhere in everyday life. Just like Plato, ad writers who produce TV commercials want to persuade people in a short amount of time. These ad writers have to persuade the view point of their audience in about 30 seconds to a minute in time. In 2010, during Super Bowl XLIV, a commercial by Audi was premiered. This Audi commercial is a great example of the use of the three types of rhetorical evidence; logos, pathos, and ethos.
One ordinary man finds himself standing in a colossal room. He looks into the audience, seeing an overwhelming amount of strangers who each share a slightly different opinion on the subject at hand. How can one individual spark a fire in the minds of such an eclectic group? Al Gore, an American politician and environmentalist, encounters this exact situation. He wishes to spread his message on global warming and inspire the audience to take action. Persuading just one person is an arduous task, but effectively confronting an entire audience requires extensive knowledge on persuasive tactics. The speaker must have a playbook containing an array of rhetorical strategies that are dispersed throughout the entire presentation. The playbook needs
A similar message that appears in his book that appeared in the aforementioned speech was the impact of the media speculation. The book addresses this in two examples. One was presented with the news of a lawsuit that an island called Vantu would file against the EPA; yet the lawsuit would never move forward due to it only serving a purpose to launder money and raise awareness to global warming that was never proven to affect the island. The other was shown to be environmental scientist who received their funding from environmental organizations, such as NERF in the book. These scientists would often have to go against their findings and report what the organizations wanted them to, or possibly lose their funding. Additionally, the book profoundly took opposition to the claim of global warming. This is presented in the form of the main character, Peter Evans, who has been manipulated into believing everything that the media has told him about global warming. It isn’t until John Kenner is introduced, that Peter begins got learn the truth about global warming. The author uses specific evidence to back his claims, specifically he uses a wide array of resources to verify his claim that Antarctica is not in fact melting, but getting colder and thickening. Furthermore, another essential concept that that book introduces is environmental extremists, or bioterrorism. These characters in the book would stop at nothing to make sure that everyone believed in global warming, and tried to destroy parts of the world to succeed in their mission. Bioterrorists are best represented as a warning of what could happen if people continue to buy into the media’s lies without having conclusive evidence to back up their
Politicians frequently receive negative publicity at the hand of their own use of language. Their uses of words as they relate to persuasion typically fall within one of the three dimensions of language functions, semantic or thematic. Often their persuasive language can be found to closely resemble any of these three categories simultaneously. There are many tools for analyzing persuasive symbols, many of which should be utilized when analyzing great communicators such as President Ronald Reagan. In response to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on January 28th, 1986 where seven brave American’s gave their lives. President Ronald Reagan made history with his famous speech, which didn’t only serve to address the great tragedy, but served as a focal point of comfort for the grieving nation. He commemorated the seven heroes who had fallen that morning in route to outer space; he expressed gratitude to NASA for their past developments and encouraged further explorations. Ronald Reagan was a great communicator, a charismatic persuader whose words delivered focus of the message through utilization of persuasive symbols. This paper aims not to be an all-inclusive guide for analyzing persuasive symbols, but will sufficiently guide the reader to be a more perceptive of persuasive language.
Authors and speakers alike use some type of persuasion on their intended audience. They often try to make you agree with their argument before considering other factors. Persuasive writing often has a copious amount of logical fallacies, defined by the Perdue Online Writing Lab as “errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic”, despite that they tend to have success with sympathetic audiences. Wendell Berry’s essay “The Whole Horse” is an example. Berry is likely to persuade his conservationist audience because of his use of emotive language.
There are many ways to make an argument, and these are not limited to only magazine articles or conversations with others. A widely used form of argument is visual images which can be used from product ads to political campaigns. The benefit of using a visual argument to persuade an audience is the powerful statements that can come from images. This can be seen in the persuasive add made by the Ray Ban company for its classic styles of its self-claimed high end sunglasses. The overall intention of this add may to be the eventual sales of more classic sunglasses, but looking deeper into this visual aid it’s possible to see the argument the company is making. To better understand this visual argument the message, creator of the message, and
An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film in which basis are put long-term researches of changes of climate, level of carbonic gas in the atmosphere, and conditions of polar ices. In this film, El Gore, a presidential candidate of 2000 and former vice president of the United States, explains the scientific and political view of global warming and its serious consequences that we already observe on Earth, and other more tragic consequences that are still to come in the near future if we do not reduce emissions of exhaust gas in the atmosphere. Nothing especially new about the global warning is presented in the film, but what made this film effective is, firs of all, the fact that El Gore, a public and well known figure in the United States, is the main protagonist of the film. Another effective point in the film is that El Gore put all the scientific work together and showed that the problem is real, it is not a myth, and it should not be ignored any longer.
Will this century mark the decline of society? Is the future safe from the mistakes of mankind? In “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene”, Roy Scranton suggests that the question we should be asking ourselves about global warming is not whether it exists or how it can be stopped, but rather how are we going to deal with it. The purpose of the article is to convince everyone that current life is unsustainable, and that nothing can be done to reverse the process; we must acknowledge that the future will be drastically different and plan in advance if civilization is to keep moving forward. Dr. Scranton develops a realistic tone that relies on logos, pathos, and ethos appeals to persuade readers of his claim. Scranton sufficiently backs up
To promote a viable campaign, the issue needs to be made real to your audience. McKibben expresses the difficulty in doing that for this issue, because carbon dioxide is insubstantial, direct effects are in gradual widespread changes that aren't easily noticed. He raises the point that the average American is so far detached that even the increasingly severe weather systems created by global warming wouldn't bother him, because he lives a life going from
President Bush’s speech was directed towards an audience of northern Arizonan republican supporters. Bush continuously uses the rhetorical appeal of pathos, the appeal to the audience’s emotions, to gain support from the crowd and connect them to the issues he addresses on an emotional level. The best example of such an issue is the promise of creating a new forest policy. By raises an issue that the audience was emotionally concerned with, Bush is able to persuade the audience to his purpose as well as relate them to it on an emotional level. It was likely that there were people in the audience who were directly affected by the recent forest fires in Arizona who felt very passionately about the topic of a new national forest policy. The appeal of emotion became a very effective tool in motioning the audience in the direction of his purpose, mainly the gain of support for the republican candidates in the next Arizona election.
Because of the controversial issues surrounding President G.W. Bush before and during the time of his reelection, the acceptance speech that he delivered is an important piece of literature to study. This diplomatic speech is a piece of rhetorical contribution because the motives and meanings behind any President’s speech is significant to us as citizens of the United States of America. It further warrants our attention because if the audience is able to comprehend the inner meanings and motives behind a presidential speech, then they will eventually be able to differentiate the actual stances and platforms of future presidential candidates and nominees.
Persuasion is a process by which the persuader, through communication, gains the approval or support for the topic (Let's Compare Motivate and Persuade, 2013). The arguments to motivate this change in thinking comes through careful use of rhetoric, but one must also be able to define the six principles of persuasion in social psychology: “Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Commitment and Consistency, Consensus, and Liking” (McLean, 2010, p. 521) and be able to recognize them as they are taking place. Then, one must carefully apply these concepts in order to find the means to effectively facilitate persuasion (p. 518).
These are conflict, poverty, instability, migration, unrest, collapse, capacity, and dependency. This film serves as a wakeup call to the audience because climate change is a very critical problem that people should address as soon as possible. It also explicitly shows that climate change is in fact in our midst and is not just a myth or a theory as some would say.
This persuasive speech was given in Rio de Janeiro, and was a plea to the individuals in attendance at the United Nations Earth Summit to recognize how they are contaminating the environment with hopes that these audience members will revise their future proposals.
Speaker Credibility: Has anyone seen the Documentary film called “An Inconvenient Truth”? I was amazed at how the earth was rapidly changing for the worse. This is why I choose this topic, to learn more about climate changes and inform everyone here about the climate change.