Cultural Rhetoric

Recently, the South African branch of the Salvation Army organization released an advertisement which was to help show the severity of domestic violence. However, they do it in a very interesting and clever way. When ‘the dress’ debate began to spread across social media, the Salvation Army used this to their advantage in order to promote their advertisement. The advertisement shows an image of a woman whose body is bruised and is wearing a white and gold dress. This would surely capture the attention of anyone who was aware of the dress which went viral over the internet. But they would soon come to find that the advertisement was not forming an opinion about what color the dress was, but rather about informing people about the prevalent issue of domestic abuse against women. I think what is especially influential about the advertisement is the message which goes along with it: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue? The only illusion is if you think it was her choice. One in s...

Billboards have a common appearance in our everyday lives because they are used to grab your attention as well as make you think or act a certain way. Billboards are usually placed on the sides of highways and busy streets in order for many people to see them. The Elm Grove Police Department in Wisconsin uses this to their advantage by the creation of interactive billboards which were made to help spread the idea of “slower is better” while driving. Each of the billboards showed the speed of each passing driver, which was then used to represent the amount of money a person might have to pay if they were to get into an accident, how many days they could spend in the hospital due to their speed, and the percentage of having a car crash based off of their speed. By showing this kind of information to drivers, this makes them think twice before they make the choice to speed or drive too fast for the road conditions. I think the arguments made by the usage of the billboards are reasonab...

While browsing Youtube, I came across a video called Always #LikeAGirl. In the video, three women, one boy, and one man were asked to show what it looked like to run, throw, and fight “like a girl”. Each of them gave very predictable performances that can be seen as degrading to girls. Then, young girls were asked the same questions. Each of the girls gave completely different performances then the first set of people did, revealing to the viewer that doing something “like a girl” has become an insult in our society. Also, because of this, using “like a girl” as an insult leads to the lack of self-confidence within young girls, especially girls who are going through puberty. The video then comes to an end with women speaking out against using “like a girl” as an insult and how doing something “like a girl” is not a bad thing. I can definitely see rhetoric being used in this video by the obvious usage of ethos and pathos. Ethos is being used by the people in the video by them tryi...