Rhetorical Analysis May 21, 2007

This week I asked a friend to try and convince me to do something in order to have an experience for my analysis on experience. I let her pick the topic and felt as though her topic and logic showed great awareness of her rhetorical situation. She tried to convince me to look up a girl in my ward directory and ask them on a date. First I felt that she was able to use great awareness because she specifically said that “Honestly girls are flattered when a guy takes the time to ask them out.” This I felt was a realization of her role as a girl speaking form experience to a guy. It also built her credibility because she was able to speak from firsthand experience on the subject. Another way in which she demonstrated outstanding awareness of her rhetorical situation was that she used words specific to the audience (i.e. myself). Several phrases such as “the perpetual party” and “your Wal-Mart date” were phases which would not have been understood in several contexts yet were meaningful and special to the specific audience addressed. The largest detriment to my friend’s argument was an appeal to my logical senses. While such phrases as “you got the idea all you need is a girl” seemed to make lots of sense and be logical alone the argument as a whole was presented in a somewhat unorganized fashion. This was a major detriment to the argument because there was no climatic ending or definite decision. Another logical fallacy was an appeal to have me double with a roommate in order to not make it as awkward. I felt as though this problem came because of alack of information on her part. I would never double with one of my current roommates so although logical to have others there the choice of who it was specifically was problematic. As far as effectiveness I felt that in achieving her goal she was ineffective I have no more desire to look up some random person in my ward and ask them out the I did before. However in making me more open to ideas and strategies of dating she was very successful. Also because of this conversation it may convince me to go on another date sooner then I would have considered before.