An
example of appealing to all audiences would be the way that he opened his speech.
He talked about America-- what a strong, developed country it is, and how we
should all be proud to live in it. He accomplished two things by saying these things.
First, he instilled a patriotic pride into his viewers, making them feel good
about themselves. This complementing could be described as an emotional, or
pathos, argument. The second way this argument works is, again, related to its
patriotism. There are many rumors around that argue Obama doesn’t care about
America, and that he’s not a “true American”, as if there even is such a thing.
He attempts to dissipate these rumors in his opening, not by directly
addressing them but by acting in the
opposite way people say he does. If they say he’s a Muslim, he acts as
Christian as possible (he quotes the Bible near the end of his speech). In
doing this, he not only puts rumors at ease but also makes himself more
relatable to the people who created the slander. One could say that, by acting
like an ideal American, he argued through his character, or ethos. Using these
two things lets Obama bridge the gap in-between him and his audience. He seems
to relate to them, so they in turn relate to him. Because of the
double-effectiveness of this patriotic approach, he uses it quite frequently.
While a good argument for its target, I found it a little excessive as someone
who doesn’t relate to a patriot. But then again, it doesn’t really matter what
I think, it matters what most of the
country thinks. Therefore, I found that acting patriotic was beneficial to
convincing his audience that he had good ideas to propose.
Another
strategy I found effective was his use of imagery and repetition of sentence
structure when talking about immigrants. He asked rhetorical questions, all
basically asking “Are we a horrible, cruel nation, or are we America?”
Image-creating phrases were used, such as “ripping a child from her mother’s
arms”, and other family-related atrocities. While this could be argued as being
an overly-sentimental appeal, it still could resonate with the soft spot in all
of us. The majority of Americans have families, and would feel the most
sympathy for the immigrants, just what Obama intended.
Those
are the two major arguments I noticed in this speech. The president weaved
these sometimes-not-so-subtle appeals into his main point about immigration.
Contrasting to the way Obama brought himself closer to his audience, the way he
argued his proposals was very logical. I also noticed that he acted very
maturely when he talked about congress, and how they had not let any of his
bills pass. He made himself seem like the bigger-man in the whole situation,
congress just being an annoying obstacle in innocent Obama’s way. But in a way
this kind of over-maturity is ridicule, just in a less noticeable form. The
only difference is that if Obama had made a personal attack on congress, a
backfire would most likely have occurred. This is because most people know the
fallacy of arguing against an opponent’s character when the opponent’s ideas are being argued, and would have
called him out on that.
The
conclusion: I think this speech is effective for most people. There is a good
balance of ethos, logos, and pathos arguments, hitting as many demographics and
ethnicities as possible. Of course, there will always be the extremists, who
couldn’t be convinced with any amount of bible-thumping. But still, for the
moderates, people on the fence, or even those who already support him, Obama
made a good argument for his immigration law proposals.
No comments:
Post a Comment