Cultural Rhetoric

On the New York Times website, Isabel Kershner reported a story about a shooting in Jerusalem . Two Palestinian men open fired in a heavily populated restaurant area in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and ended up killing three people and injuring several others. One of the gunmen was shot by a nearby security guard and is currently being treated at an Israeli hospital. The other was arrested and imprisoned. The police reporting say that they believe this event was a terrorist attack. Isabel then discusses the previous Palestinian attacks at Jerusalem. During the Tel Aviv attack police searched for explosives while civilians fled the area. Isabel had five eye witness accounts included in her report. People locked themselves in stores as the gunfire continued and they called the local law enforcement. Before the gunmen started shooting, they had ordered food and were wearing black suits. Isabel then discusses an attack in March at Tel Aviv. While the story itself is a very important and shocki...

In November of 2012, Andy Puddicombe gave a speech at the TEDSalon in London called, All It Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes. During this speech he discussed the benefits of meditation and slowing down our lives. He started his speech off by asking the audience a question about the last time they did nothing. He related to the audience through humor and situations that happen to all of us. After he describes these situations he states the fact that we do not take time to take care of our minds. Since we do not slow down to take care of our minds, we get stressed which causes us to get overwhelmed and distracts us from the wonderful things in life. He tells the audience about a person experience he had as a child about going to a meditation class with his mother. After explaining his experience, he uses a metaphor to compare meditation to aspirin for the mind. He then gave another personal story about when he was around 20 years old because a lot of things were happening in his life at th...

Matthew Parker, from Church at the Mission, gave a sermon on January 19, 2016 about being God’s masterpiece. He starts his sermon with various questions about people’s likes and dislikes. After discussing the questions he goes on to talk about what people appreciate and how humans commemorate those things with things such as a Hall of Fame. While on this topic he explains what the point of a Hall of Fame is and lists a few people in the music Hall of Fame. He then states that “most of us will not be in the Hall of Fame” and that “God wants to make each of us His masterpiece”. He then claims that all of those famous people are just regular people like us, who have succeeded in a chosen field with the help of someone who sees our potential. He says that they all had someone in the background encouraging them and helping them. God is that person to us and wants to see our full potential. He says that the only way to get to our full potential is to let God do it. As a conclusion, he adds i...

Today, while I was watching T.V., I saw a commercial for Febreze fabric refreshers and air fresheners. The commercial started out with a man and his dog sitting in the his “man cave”. The announcer started talking about how the man had gotten used to the bad odor in the room, but when the man got up and left the room, the chair that he was sitting in turned into a giant hamburger. The announcer said that the giant hamburger is what the wife believed the room smelled like. He then discussed how Febreze can eliminate these odors in the “hard to wash fabrics”, such as furniture and pillows. After he sprayed the room with Febreze the wife walked in and thought the room smelled good. The announcer then tells us to use Febreze fabric refresher to eliminate the bad odors in our house. In this commercial the advertisers are using pathos and ethos. In using the humor of turning the chair into a hamburger, the advertisers do not seem like know-it-alls and can be viewed as normal people. Also...