Rhetorical Argument Analysis 

For the second part of the Rhetorical Analysis Assignment, I wrote a short poem about the origins of language and how it’s devolved into unjust discrimination against others. How something that was created to encourage us to become closer has somehow made people tear another apart. I feel as though a poem made sense in this instance because of how important language is in creating one. I would consider my own words and language while writing and trying to communicate my own meaning. It would get me to question my word choice and how I speak, just as I would want someone who read it to think. I would want them to think on their own, but also lead them with my own words and observations. I wanted to demonstrate how different the origins of language are compared to how people treat it now. I’d like people who treat others differently based on their speech to see the poem and understand that there’s no real reason to do that. All it is, is discrimination. Humans are very social and that is the purpose of language, it’s to make people come closer together and communicate effectively. Even in the face of disconnection, humans have the ability to communicate with each other if they genuinely want to. Shaming someone is unproductive and shows their own inability to effectively speak with another person. The point of the poem is to make people question the commonplace discrimination against those who speak “broken” English. 

I focused on the Pathos appeal when writing. Empathy and emotions seemed the most important aspects for the point I was trying to make. I wrote words like loneliness, animosity, and weak in order to appeal to the emotions of the reader, to make them think of things more emotionally than the way they tended to, to think about why they feel the way they do. Their own emotions would come to mind, and they would, hopefully, realize the situation of the people who were treated poorly. They would inspect their own actions and thoughts on the subject. If someone truly empathized with others, they would understand how important it is to treat someone nicely even if they don’t feel they don’t communicate or speak English “properly”. I also used rhetorical questions in order to get the reader to think of the answer on their own. They would question themselves without being told to, without the bias of having an answer right in front of them, but the story around it. I wanted them to think about why people who speak “broken” English can be treated less than, why they are considered less smart, or weaker. I want them to think about why they are treated differently, maybe even why they’ve thought of or treated them differently.