"Wasted talent is a waste I cannot stand." This is a quote by economic 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 tend to not follow the steps …show more content…
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 knwoledgeable 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 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 to 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 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. It is obviously clear that Larry Smith makes many great points and they could easily convince people to reevaluate their motives and better themselves. He states towards the end of his speech "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.
The speech I chose was Cal Ripken Jr.’s it was given at the Orioles home ball park, Camden Yards at his last home game before retiring. It is a special occasion speech and was given in front of over 48,000 fans. He used a tried and true opening sentence that although a little altered had a very familiar ring. He opened with “As a kid, I had this dream” a very loose but familiar take on MLK’s “I have a dream”. This was a great attention getter and probably had people on their feet immediately. This audience was already motivate to hear his speech so that was not an issue. Most of the fans were there for the purpose of hearing his retirement speech. He did not preview his points in the introduction he addressed those in the body of his speech one at a time. He did not try to establish credibility as he was speaking about himself so who knows more about him than himself.
Lebron James is a well known professional basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lebron is often referred to as one of the greatest to ever pick up a basketball. Lebron makes money from playing basketball but a substantial amount of his income comes from sponsorships and endorsement deals with outside brands. This is where his social media plays a huge part of his life.
Advertisements are constructed to be compelling; nonetheless, not all of them reach their objective and are efficient. It is not always easy to sway your audience unless your ad has a reliable appeal. Ads often use rhetoric to form an appeal, but the appeals can be either strong or weak. When you say an ad has a strong rhetorical appeal, it consists of ethos, pathos, logos, and Kairos. Advertisers use these appeals to cohere with their audience. Nike is known to be one of the leading brands of the sports shoes and apparel. It holds a very wide sector of followers around the world. In the Nike ad, Nike uses a little boy watching other basketball players play, and as the kid keeps growing, his love for basketball keeps growing. Eventually, he
Lebron James capitalizes on the importance of family throughout the article. He is announcing to the fans and “haters” that he will be returning to Cleveland. He is also incorporating the fact that he is apologizing for his actions in the past. He emphasizes the importance of family and relationships in order to capture the emotions of his audience. James uses rhetorical appeals, such as logic and reasoning, in "I'm coming home" to convey that he is sorry for his actions: however, he still makes it a point to justify his previous departure, while also keeping the importance of family and relationships relevant to his decisions
Jared Diamond makes a great and compelling argument about how inequality across the entire globe originated. The main components that were agreeing with this argument were guns germs and steel. Guns meaning the advancement in weaponry, military warfare and military sophistication. Germs meaning the harmful disease and other foul illness that wiped out humans throughout History. Then the third and final point steel, which was about the advancement in societies and the complex sophistication with their technology, which lead to building great architecture and devices that were completely impactful.
Scientists are constantly forced to test their work and beliefs. Thus they need the ability to embrace the uncertainty that science is based on. This is a point John M. Barry uses throughout the passage to characterize scientific research, and by using rhetorical devices such as, comparison, specific diction, and contrast he is able show the way he views and characterizes scientific research.
In the book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer wrote about Christopher McCandless, a nature lover in search for independence, in a mysterious and hopeful experience. Even though Krakauer tells us McCandless was going to die from the beginning, he still gave him a chance for survival. As a reader I wanted McCandless to survive. In Into the Wild, Krakauer gave McCandless a unique perspective. He was a smart and unique person that wanted to be completely free from society. Krakauer included comments from people that said McCandless was crazy, and his death was his own mistake. However, Krakauer is able to make him seem like a brave person. The connections between other hikers and himself helped in the explanation of McCandless’s rational actions. Krakauer is able to make McCandless look like a normal person, but unique from this generation. In order for Krakauer to make Christopher McCandless not look like a crazy person, but a special person, I will analyze the persuading style that Krakauer used in Into the Wild that made us believe McCandless was a regular young adult.
Hosseini’s purpose of writing the Kite Runner was to teach the readers the different ethnic groups in Afghanistan. The main character, Amir, is a Pashtun and Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims, then there are Hazara’s that the Pashtuns do not get along with. Hazara’s are not welcomed by the Pashtuns because they are different social classes.
In the article “It’s Not About You” by David Brooks, Brooks takes a different perspective on this current generation. Many of the past generation huff at the thought of the new age group. Brooks has an incredible, somewhat biased opinion relating to the new generation, which is not unusual since he is from the current generation. Brooks discusses and explores the idea that the current generation is expected to grow up, get educated, get married and then have children. Brooks speculates that the new generation will be less family-orientated and maybe more adventurous and more about just living life and getting to experience things. Overall, Brooks wrote something different from most stories regarding generations.
The American diet is becoming extremely harmful to the health of especially children. The new generation has different trends in regard to health compared to those of perhaps their parents. In the documentary Fed Up, Soechtig uses data and statistics, as well as narratives of emotional events to highlight the long run issues with American’s poor diet and also to criticize the food industry. By doing this, the director hopes to spark a change in diet.
In this song, Eminem is rapping about having the courage to take a stand regardless of what others think. Atticus displayed courage in the same way by fighting for Tom Robinson although his family, friends, and neighbors constantly harassed him and his family for it. In addition, he broke out of the cage of racism that required him to favor the white person in the case by attempting to get Tom an innocent sentence while other white southern lawyers would have immediately entered a plea.
In this excerpt from Malcolm X's autobiography, he describes to the reader how he gained his education: by teaching himself to read and doing so liberally.
Though violence shouldn’t always be your “go-to” solution, in harsh times of oppression it can be morally justified. When pushed to a breaking point, an outburst can be viewed as a turning point that can either make or break your cause. Though there have been instances throughout history where violence led us down a dark road, there have also been instances where it has held a candle up in a dark room so that the path to a better future can be viewed in its full glory.
On September 18, 2014, as the accomplished career of one of the greatest and most respected baseball players of all time was coming to an end, Gatorade released an advertisement in commemoration of this and to celebrate their successful endorsement partnership. Derek Jeter, who spent the entirety of his 20 year long career leading the New York Yankees, is seen in this ad strolling through New York and greeting the locals on his way to a game as Frank Sinatra sings “My Way” in the background. The commercial primarily appeals to the pathos of the broad audience of New Yorkers of all ages, ethnicities, and genders, athletes, and baseball fans across the world. In addition to this emotional appeal, the creators of this commercial also attempt to
To begin, when one has a good mind, one must also have ambitions and goals to go with it, if one wishes to be successful. Those who are intelligent are capable of doing great things, but without ambitions and goals, there is no reason to actually go out and accomplish anything. I myself know a man who never set goals for himself in life, even though he was brilliant. This man simply laid back and coasted on his laurels during his educational career because he was so smart. However, in high school, the work began to catch up to him, and soon enough he was failing most of his classes. Still, he was without ambition and had no intent of studying or trying to raise his grades. Today, he lives at home with his mother at the age of 25. This man perfectly illustrates the point that even though one might have a good mind, they must put it to use.