Rhetorical Analysis

We just starting working on our rhetorical analysis papers. We have to choose a speech and then we have to go through and analyze the speech and how it did as far as appealing to the audience that it was directed to. The speech I chose was from the 2014 ESPY Awards when Stuart Scott was honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. He was dying from cancer at the time and passed away a few months later, but he managed to inspire and give hope to thousands of people before he passed away. His speech at the ESPY's was inspiring because he was dealing first hand with a tough challenge and he was still courageous enough to be positive and provide hope for other people in similar situations. I think it should be a pretty good paper to write because Stuart Scott was an influential journalist in sports and he had an interesting, inspiring life.

Readings So Far

So far in class we've read and learned a lot of stuff from our text book and from our in class discussions. From Mindful Writing, we've learned some helpful steps to becoming a better writer, such as planning, practicing, revising, and reflecting. They will help you recognize strengths and weaknesses in your writing and help you become better. Another thing the textbook has talked about is setting goals for your writing. It says to set specific goals,and to set self-regulating goals. This is helpful when you're writing because it lets you work on more small things to accomplish one big thing rather than trying to go after something huge all at once. After that it went it to detail on thinking rhetorically and using rhetoric in your writing. It covered how it can help you entertain more audiences and how to even identify those audiences before you start writing.

In class we've talked a lot about ethos, pathos, and logos. We then used those three tools to analyze The Family: A Proclamation to the World and to decide how the writers of that document decided to appeal to all audiences and what tools they used to try and elicit a response from the most possible people. Everything from the topics they covered to the words they used to describe the topics was picked specifically to try and appeal to the most possible people, from any faith and any background. They even adjusted the tone of the paper when they got to more serious or stern parts like when they called on citizens and government leaders to help promote the family as the central unit of society.

Flooding the Earth with Real Things (Elder Bednar Response)

Flooding the Earth with Real Things

Elder Bednar made lots of great points in his talks. In his first talk, “Things as They Really Are”, he outlined the various forms of technology and the impacts that they can have on people’s lives in positive and negative ways. He goes on to say that “computer-mediated communication can play a role in minimizing the importance of our physical bodies.” He’s very stern about the fact that being idle and wasting away our time are detrimental to our spiritual well-being, but in his second talk, “To Sweep the Earth as With a Flood”, he also defines some of the various ways that social media and technology can be used to hasten the church’s work and help with the missionary effort and recognition of the Lord and His work. He talks about a movie that the Church helped to produce- “Meet the Mormons”. It was originally produced to be shown in visitors centers and at a film festival in Salt Lake, but the church leadership realized that it could be beneficial in increasing the Church’s recognizability and reputation. It addressed some common beliefs and falsities about the Church. It also showed great examples of how LDS Church members are good people who contribute to the world in whatever way they can. He talked about using sites like Twitter and Instagram and how they use hashtags and various ways to spread the messages of the Church and its teachings.

First Page

I'm Zach. I like baseball, hunting, and fishing. I'm a true freshman and I'm from Cedar City, Utah. I have one brother and one sister and two adorable nieces. There's my first post!