Rhetorical Analysis Essay
In February of 2016, TED Senior Fellow, Safwat Saleem, gave an inspirational speech asserting the importance of resilience in the face of judgment. Saleem supports his claims by using pathos and appealing to the audience’s sense of empathy and emotion. He also describes situations in detail and expresses a timeline. Saleem wants the audience to react to his claim and story with their own personal development. He wants the audience to reflect on the importance of breaking away from harmful societal norms. In “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent,” Safwat Saleem effectively convinces a segment of the general public, through persuasive tactics, of the importance of breaking away from society’s preconceived notions of what is “normal” and instead focusing on expressing yourself in ways that please you, not the expectations of others.
Saleem begins his speech by telling a story from his childhood and explaining his past with social anxiety and bullying. Here, through pathos, Saleem uses both an emotional and descriptive persuasion tactic to connect with and convince his audience. By explaining his past of failing to fit in and being judged by those around him, he begins to support his claim by first establishing the idea that there are societal norms that outcast certain groups. He describes memories of a time when he was “the kid in class who would never raise his hand when he had a question or knew the answer (3:35).” Appealing to his audience’s empathy, He explains how he spent his childhood “feeling that if [he] spoke, it would become obvious that there was something wrong with [him], that [he] was not normal (4:18).” Urging individuals to break away from their preconceived notions of normality, Saleem explains his background and personal experience with this societal issue. His struggles can similarly highlight an overlooked outcasting of certain groups within education systems. People of color, for example, are often taught to
believe they are inferior in school. Advanced placement classes in high school are open to anyone, but due to certain groups being given less resources and not as much encouragement from teachers and peers, white children predominantly make up these courses. Many minorities even grow to falsely think of themselves as inadequately prepared due to the lack of external motivations for them to take these higher-level classes.
After using emotion and narration, the author moves to supporting his claim by explaining a process. Building off the emotional strategy he started with, he gains credibility from the audience by going through how he tends to create an animation through voice-over effects. He explains this process while providing sound bites that relate to the topic. He also shows graphics and videos on screen. The societal issue he can solidify through the previous persuasive tactics allows him to explain why he goes through this animation and editing process to attempt to fix his voice, something society made him insecure about due to it not being “normal.” By going through a process of highly editing his voice within his work, he has found a way to break free from the judgment of society and “finally sound normal (4:59).” Reusing the tactics of timelines and narration from the previous section, Saleem explains that even after “fixing” his voice, he received negative reactions to it. After he “stopped using [his] voice in [his work] (5:09)” because of the hateful comments, he was forced to reflect on this standard of normality that even he had grown to accept. Saleem establishes with the audience that the idea of being normal “has a lot to do with expectations (5:21)” by recounting his own self-reflection after feeling put down by those around him. I think this first-hand account of one’s perspective on life being changed due to a realization of their ability to control how they consciously perceive the unfair world around them, can prove an importance of not only experiencing life, but understanding it. This notion can stand as a parallel to the wrongness of the statement
“ignorance is bliss,” that is often said within today’s political culture. Comparing your personal experience, in a society, to an actual understanding of what goes on in that society, can help individuals identify the privilege or misfortunes they face in life. Such identifications of inequity could help dissolve these unjust expectations in place.
To close the speech, Saleem reconsiders the judgment he had received on his voiceover work. In concluding the argument, he goes back to his initial rhetorical strategy of emotion by reminding the audience of the judgment he faced and his internalized hatred toward his voice. He goes on to explain how “the people commenting did not know how self-conscious [he was] about [his] voice (6:50).” They simply had grown to have an expectation of what is a “normal” voiceover voice, so they commented on the irregularity of his. These expectations of society are interwoven with stereotypes and discrimination. Reconsidering his past experiences and gaining sympathy and understanding from the audience gives the audience a chance to reflect on their own preconceived notions of “normal.” Relating to Saleem’s goal of showing the audience the importance of expressing themselves in ways that fulfill them, not others, such actions but be contextualized. Pleasing yourself and breaking away from the expectations of others, for some, can be filled with risk. It is not always possible for those in strongly marginalized and discriminated groups to simply act in ways that pleases them. This understanding can allow one to realize, not only the deeper issues woven into Saleem’s online hatred, but the disenfranchisement marginalized people unnecessarily face on a larger societal scale.
Safwat Saleem “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent,” convinces an audience, shackled by the harmful norms of society, of the importance of breaking away from society’s preconceived notions of what is “normal” and instead focusing on expressing yourself in ways that please you, not the expectations of others. Saleem uses tactics of pathos, narration,
and the explanation of a process, to persuade his audience. Connecting emotionally with his audience allowed Saleem to establish a basic acknowledgment of issues we have in society regarding the ridiculing and outcasting of certain groups and individuals. Using narration, Saleem could elaborate on the emotional tactic by providing a story that his audience could either relate to or provide sympathy towards. Ending with an explanation of a process that allowed Saleem to attempt to hide what society deemed unacceptable about him, built upon the emotional tactics he initially used to persuade the audience. These strategies allowed Saleem to successfully connect with the audience for them to understand and accept his claim. Ultimately, we must identify and challenge the general norms that have routed themselves in our societal psyches. In order to do so, we as individuals must challenge the minds around us, starting with our own.
Works Cited
Saleem, Safwat. “Why I Keep Speaking Up, Even When People Mock My Accent.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Feb. 2016.
