Cultural Rhetoric

Today, while making cupcakes for my birthday, I was watching Fox News (only because my father left it on). I overheard an interesting story that I could write my blog post about, so I looked it up. The Broadcast I watched was on a program called On The Record, and it is about Yale University. What happened is that a bunch of students taking a year long English course which is about ‘eight great poets’ got offended that all of these poets are white. They created a petition to get signed and give to Yale, in order for the class to be abolished entirely. The students want the course to be abolished because they think that because they only study white authors, that it creates a ‘hostile environment’. On the show, they bring on a student who is against the petition named Zach Young to further talk about the issue at hand. The host of the show goes on to ask him many questions. He seems to be very prepared. He speaks in a very logical order and uses rhetorical devices and skills so th...

I found a speech by Tim Urban on ted.com. It sparked my interest as soon as I saw the title, Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. I immediately became interested in this speech because I procrastinate every single day of my life, and it is honestly the most frustrating thing to me. So I decided to watch it. It turned out to be quite hilarious and very relatable. He decided to write a blog about procrastinators and why they are the way they are. He then goes on to illustrate the difference between the brains of a procrastinator and of a non-procrastinator with funny yet simple drawings. He uses the character of a ‘rational decision maker’ and an ‘instant gratification monkey’. The speaker then goes on to say that even though they can overlap, procrastinators tend to spend much more time doing the monkey’s ‘easy and fun’ activities, and he calls that place ‘the dark playground’. He says the fun that you have in the ‘dark playground’ is not actually fun because your mind is ...

I could not remember any specific sermons that I’ve heard to write my blog post about. I decided to google sermons and see what comes up. I found a sermon from a series of sixteen sermons. I chose the tenth sermon that the author wrote about having peace by being justified by faith. The author starts out by quoting the passage of scripture that his sermon is about. His sermon is based off of Romans chapter 5 verse 1, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The author’s whole idea is to say that the wicked have no peace with God. He proves that statement with logos by citing where he gets that idea in the book of Isaiah chapter 48 verse 22, “There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” The wicked can be secure if and only if they do not know about God and their sins, but as soon as they find out about God, they will be miserable. He also uses logos by defining his terms. He defines justified as to be pardoned and accepted by God. He al...

Lately on television, I have been seeing many new DIRECTV commercials. I see them while watching football. This particular commercial is like a series of the same commercials, each with their own popular NFL quarterback. (The NFL is the National Football League.) In the commercial I chose, Tony Romo, of the Dallas Cowboys, is the star. This commercial and ones like it are trying to get the viewer to by DIRECTV. This particular commercial targets fans of the NFL. It says that if you buy DIRECTV, you can get ‘NFL Sunday Ticket’. NFL Sunday Ticket is a program in which you can watch every single game, live from start to finish. They advertise this because those with basic cable can only watch certain football games, according to their location. This commercial, like it’s ‘sister’ commercials, uses pathos. Each one compares the NFL quarterback in his normal state to the NFL quarterback in a disguise. In this one, Tony Romo, a DIRECTV user is compared to an ‘arts and craftsy Tony Romo...