“Analyzing My Rhetorical Strategies”

Jamila Lyiscott did such an amazing job on her speech on 3 ways to speak English. I chose this text because it is the most relatable topic in our generation. Many people can agree with me on why people can relate to this text and that is because we have many tones on how we approach society and the people we have in our lives. What do I mean by that, you may ask? Well, if you really think about it. We have many tones and ways of speaking to the people we see in our everyday lives. The way we speak to our parents, our professors, and our friends. The tones and vocabulary we use against these people are vastly different most of the time. We speak to our parents with a filter and not in a way that they could potentially kick me out of the house or tape me up to a wall and throw darts at me. We speak to our parents calmly and respectfully without any attitude. The way we approach our professors is very professional and, in a way, shows them that we want to learn more rather than in the way we speak to our friends. Which leads me to my third point. The way we speak to our friends, our everyday friends, our best friend we knew since kindergarten, is without any filter. Many friends may curse at one another in a joking manner, gossip about other people. Spilling out information about who likes who and other things. We can never speak like this to our parents or our professors because if so, then we may not be on this planet longer than expected.

What I did for this text is that I made a meme. I made a meme where all 3 spider-mans are pointing at each other symbolizing them as English. Each spider-man had a separate way of speaking English. One had “Your Parents”, the other had “Your Classroom”, and the last one had “Your Friends”. This symbolized that even though you’re speaking the same language, they are still different between each other regarding how you’re using the tone and with who you are speaking it to.  I chose the genre of meme because I felt that it could be more relevant to the topic. I wanted to bring something that people of our generation see in their everyday lives and what it is that you may ask. Memes! There is nothing more relatable to an everyday meme we see on our social media. So, since we are on the topic of what we experience of the different ways we speak English to our society on a daily, I felt it was best to use a no other than a daily meme to emphasize this topic. The rhetorical strategies I observed from all this would be pathos and ethos. I say this because I’m using more emotion and humor to express what Jamila Lyiscott spoke about the ways of speaking English. I also used ethos because it shows a form of character. Showing how we as people have many ways of speaking to others and how different it is when you’re using it. This was my piece and analysis of what I emphasized in my rhetorical strategies.