John Cortes Texting And Driving Speech

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The speech we have chosen is called “Texting and Driving…Don’t Do it!”. While this speech may not be given by a famous person, we feel that the speaker does a good job at discussing this public epidemic called “Texting and Driving”. We chose this speech, out of all the others because it has a specific goal to persuade and inform the audience not to text and drive. This speaker was also a respectable choice because he established ethos right away, by stating all the research he has done in order to give this speech. While he does not directly say it, it does become obvious by the amount of statistics and information that he gives us that he has done his research. This paper is going to address the speaker’s overall goals of his speech, some …show more content…

That goal was to inform his audience about the dangers of texting while driving and even more importantly persuade his audience why they should not text while driving. The speaker makes his goal clear multiple times throughout his speech by listing three main reasons why people should not text and drive. The three goals the speaker was speaking on were causes of accidents and collisions, causes the loss of life, and finally the price of paying for tickets. Those reasons include the increased amount of accidents and collisions that result from texting and driving, the 5,800 lives that are lost each year, and the legal consequences that take place if caught texting and driving (John Cortes, “Texting and Driving”). We also know his purpose is to inform and persuade because he defends his position by giving multiple statistics, as well as, the constant repetition of the words “please don’t text and drive” (John Cortes, “Texting and Driving”). John did an excellent job at achieving his intended goals for the speech by “wowing” his audience. This can be seen by his positive reviews and comments. Of the available ratings, less than 1% of the audience members did not feel affected by his speech. However, he was still able to reach out to over 100,000 people with one single …show more content…

The dominant ways of interpreting this speech was to take the facts for their actual and intended meaning (Palczewski, Ice, & Fritch, 2012, p. 24-25). These facts would include the statistics involving texting while driving accidents. We believe that the majority of the audience were a part of the dominant class and believe that texting and driving is wrong. However, those who are part of the negotiated position tend to have mixed ideas about whether texting and driving is bad. This is because the use of the negotiated way of interpreting a speech is the use of believing, or accepting the information being introduced, as well as disregarding, or forgetting some of the information (Palczewski, Ice, & Fritch, 2012, p. 24-25). We believe that there is still a fair amount of audience members who are in the negotiated position. While they do admit that texting and driving is wrong, many of them still will continue texting and driving because they do not believe that any bad consequences will ever arise from them doing it. Therefore, they reject the idea that it can happen to them. This group of people is still too large for comfort. The last group from Halls model is the oppositional position, who understand the intended meaning, but reject it and form their own opinion (Palczewski, Ice, & Fritch, 2012, p. 24-25). In this particular speech, very few people

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