Cultural Rhetoric

One day I was watching TV and a Covergirl commercial came on. I thought it would be a good commercial to use for this blog post because we see makeup commercials all of the time, and I think there is a lot of rhetoric in the commercial. The commercial is about Zendaya trying to promote a type of Covergirl mascara called Super Sizers Fibers mascara. Like a lot of Covergirl commercials, they use a celebrity, popstar Zendaya. The fact that she is a celebrity already makes the product appealing because she's popular, trustworthy, and looked up to so that would be a form of rhetoric. The first thing that she says is “Do you want to try something new?”, then she says the name of the mascara. By doing that she is using rhetoric to draw the viewer in and get them intrigued. Then she starts listing what benefits the mascara has or the features of it, which is “400% volume and so much length you won't believe your eyes.” Anyone who wants full, voluminous, long eyelashes are intereste...

I actually enjoy watching TEDTalks in my free time, I think they're fascinating. One day I came across a TEDTalks called "what happens when you have a disease doctors cannot diagnose”. It's about a woman named Jennifer Brea, 33, and how she has a disease called chronic fatigue syndrome. She began by speaking about her life five years before that day and how she was a PhD student at Harvard, she loved traveling, and was engaged. One day she had a fever of 104.7. She didn't think anything of it and one day her fever broke, she became so dizzy that she couldn’t even get out of bed or walk to the bathroom. She went to the doctor and he told her nothing was wrong, but it got worse and she lost ability to write certain letters or draw complete circles. Sometimes she couldn't speak or move and she went to multiple specialists for everything you could think of. One day she walked 2 miles home from the neurologist and when she walked in the door she collapsed and her bra...

The Osteens (Joel and Victoria) are powerful leaders in Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Their sermons at their church are broadcasted on TV. I’ve seen Joel Osteen’s sermons before but I have always had a critical opinion on their view of God and what he put us on earth for and so on. So I was intrigued when I found a YouTube video of Victoria Osteen called Little by Little because I had never seen any of her sermons. It is a 10 minute sermon about how to use God’s strength to persevere through every situation. She mentions how we suffer so we turn to God for his help for comfort and that every person on earth goes through the same challenges/struggles. She said that God provides everything and everyone to do everything that is a part of his plan. She also said that we give up on things or miss opportunities because we don’t feel like we are good enough. But, God opened the right doors for us to do what he wants so if we are feeling too scared to do something we should use God’s st...