Cultural Rhetoric

An advertisement for Tide laundry pods played before a music video I was watching on YouTube. It was extremely interesting to watch because it almost seemed as if the company was not even interested in selling their product. The commercial began with a close up of a baby sitting on the floor playing with some toys. The narrator then asked if the watcher was able to list all the child hazards in the room in five seconds. One of these hazards was revealed to be the company’s own, Tide Pods in reach of the baby. The ad finished by reminding the watcher to keep laundry pods out of the reach of children. The short commercial was incredibly simple and as previously stated, did not build the product up much at all. In fact, the product was claimed a danger in some cases. However, Tide was aware that this ad would still have positive results even when it does not obviously tell the watcher to buy their product. The ad holds a strong appeal to the viewer’s emotions (pathos) by appearing to ha...

In March of 2015, Laura Schulz spoke for a TED conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her subject of discussion: babies. Maybe some would be confused by this, seeing how TED is a foundation all about ideas, innovation and advancement. How could a baby, the very beginning of human life, the kind of person least aware of or concerned with cultural development, relate to any of those pillars? Schulz explains that young children are actually just as involved, if not more so, in growth, understanding and developing minds. It is apparent that children begin to comprehend things at an astonishingly high rate after they are born. However, this TED talk further reveals that babies as young as 15-months are already capable of matching what adult scientists attempt to do each day. That is, babies are fully able to draw plausible conclusions from small amounts of data before they can even speak their own names. Schulz’s speech was very informative, well organized, and thoroughly supported ...

For this observation of rhetoric, I opted to analyze a sermon by one of my personal favorite preachers, Francis Chan. The message I chose to listen to was the last sermon he preached to one of his past churches. This particular lesson addressed how to understand the love of Christ and why it is important to be able to do so. He spoke from Ephesians 3: 14-19 where Paul talks about how the Holy Spirit is essential to fully comprehending the love Jesus Christ has for his children. Throughout the message, Chan notes that this is a topic that is new to him. He admits that he is prone to addressing only symptoms of this issue instead of the full heart issue Paul points out; he tries to fix things rather than pray as Paul did. Chan is entirely aware that the message he speaks is useful and knowledgeable for himself just as much as it is for his congregation. The main points that Chan has come across while recently diving into this unexplored topic begins with God’s love for us being wholly un...