Larry Smith Rhetorical Analysis Essay

"Wasted talent is a waste I cannot stand." This is a quote from economist professor Larry Smith during an interview for the global media company Forbes. Larry Smith is an economist who works at the University of Waterloo in Canada. In the year 2011, he gave a very influential Ted talk to an audience of millions. In a brief 15 minutes, Larry Smith provides humor and blunt honesty in order to inform his audience as to why a person may fail to have a prosperous and successful career. Throughout his Ted talk, Smith adopts a humorous, but subjective tone to appeal to his audience while also using many real life examples.

Smith begins his speech by describing how people have the mindset to pursue a great career, but tends to not follow the steps to do so. The credibility of his speech is well established by his subjective tone. Rather than using statistics, he uses his own opinions and real life situations in order to convey a sense of credibility behind his

reasoning. The fact that he is also a successful economist adds to his credibility since it usually takes a Masters Degree in order to become an economist. For a person who may not know, a professional economist is someone who is a very knowledgeable at understanding the logistics of economics. Although Smith comes off a bit rude with his use of humor, the logic behind his thoughts are likely to grab the attention of the audience. He does not exactly relate to one specific audience, however his message is intended for everyone. Particularly, it is meant for people who have not achieved their lifelong goals while giving warning to the people just now starting to pursue careers. He instantly catches the audience's attention when he repeatedly uses real life excuses as to why people fall off from realizing their true potential. For example, he says, "Ah, but I still want a great career. I'm not prepared to pursue my passion, so I know what I'm going to do, because I have a solution. I have a strategy. It's the one Mommy and Daddy told me about. Mommy and Daddy told me that if I worked hard, I'd have a good career. So, if you work hard and have a good career, if you work really, really, really hard, you'll have a great career. Doesn't that, like, mathematically make sense? Hmm. Not. But you've managed to talk yourself into that." Smith's use of humorous examples such as this helps convince the audience that they have been thinking the wrong strategies the whole time which helps persuade people to go beyond hard work.

Along with his use of examples and excuses that relate to the lives of the audience, Smith also appeals to the audience's emotions by using blunt honesty. By bringing up the point that "if you don't find the highest expression of your talent, if you settle for "interesting," what the hell ever that means, do you know what will happen at the end of your long life? Your friends and family will be gathered in the cemetery, and there beside your gravesite will be a tombstone, and inscribed on that tombstone it will say, 'Here lies a distinguished engineer, who invented Velcro.' But what that tombstone should have said, in an alternative lifetime, what it should have said if it was your highest expression of talent, was, 'Here lies the last Nobel Laureate in Physics, who formulated the Grand Unified Field Theory and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive.'" This technique seems quite crude, however it is very eye-opening for the audience because they then begin to wonder if they have wasted their entire lives coming up with pity excuses. Smith tries to show people just how bad the situation has become and how right he actually is. He even goes deeper and states that "[I]n spite of all these excuses, you will find, you will find your passion. And you'll still fail." Triggering the emotions of the audience is a useful strategy for Smith due to the fact that he is trying to convince the audience exactly why they will fail. Furthermore, it makes the audience feel more like the subject of the matter and that they should change their attitudes and lifestyles in order to avoid the possibility of making excuses.

In addition to his credibility and emotional appeals, Smith uses the deductive enthymeme technqiue by giving his audience a few propositions and then drawing together a truth. Also, when describing these propositions, Smiths' tone is extremely cold, just as the real world is in many ways. In this specific case, he gives examples of situations and excuses which ultimately leads to the truth that one will not succeed nor achieve a great career unless they understand exactly what it takes to do so. As mentioned in his speech, Smith believes that people will fail due to their inability to overcome the fear of failure. However, he relies mostly on his own point of view and appealing emotionally to the audience rather than adding more logical terms to his argument. In other words, he fails to provide statistics or facts that could be used to support his claim. Although he fails to provide this information, he does indeed add many examples and reasons which counter balance his logical appeal.

It is obviously clear that Larry Smith makes many great points which could easily convince people to reevaluate their motives and better themselves. Towards the end of his speech he states, "But the 'unless' word is also attached to that other, most terrifying phrase, 'If only I had …' 'If only I had …' If you ever have that thought ricocheting in your brain, it will hurt a lot." This one point alone makes the purpose of his essay stand out and become hard to take in. It really begins to go beyond simple words and becomes more meaningful to the audience. He gets really personal throughout his speech and relates the situations with the audience in ways that will truly have them thinking. It is almost as if he knows all the touchy subjects to discuss in order to mess with the hearts and minds of his audience.

Through the use of rhetorical and effective techniques and with a brilliant emotional appeal throughout the entire speech, Smith informs the audience as to why they will fail.

He establishes his credibility as a successful economist and uses subjective tone to set the stage for why the audience should believe his reasoning. Along with his credibility, he concentrates on real life situations in order to appeal emotionally with his audience. In doing so, he manages to gain a relationship and establishes authority by managing rhetorical distance between the audience and himself. He then focusses on logically appealing to the audience by displaying their weaknesses due to the fear of failing and looking ridiculous while trying. In addition, he exemplifies humor and a candor attitude to inform the world as to why they will not succeed in having a lucrative career. By the end of his speech, Smith was able appeal to the audience's sympathy and leave them with that everlasting and heartbreaking feeling of "what

if?"