JT's Rhetoric and Civic Life

Towards the end of his senior year of high school, Shane Cummings said that he hated how most speeches at graduation ceremonies were boring and bland. “It’s always the same ‘we’ve made it here, and we’re going on to the next step in our lives’ type of speech that goes on for much longer than it needs to.” he said. He later found out that he was the valedictorian of his class. With this knowledge, he planned to make a speech to top all valedictory speeches of the past. He had the perfect opportunity to make his wish come true.

In addition to having a funny aspect to his speech, he still managed to provide insight on life, and gave his classmates courage.

He took the time to add jokes into his speech. He poked fun at his brother, who was the valedictorian of his own class three years earlier, and at the time “Mom’s favorite child”. Later in his speech, Shane decided to give his advice to the class by giving back advice he received throughout the year. He read quotes that he had compiled, most of which were funny.

These quotes included two hilarious quotes from the AP Physics teacher, including “Every time you take a picture it deteriorates part of the human soul. Ever wonder why there are so many pictures of dead people?” and “To test your underwear, you throw it at the wall, and if it sticks it’s time to wash it. If not, you get another day out of it. Pants too, if they stand up on their own, it’s time to wash them.” These quotes were woven into the speech to add humor, and it was masterfully done. Shane managed to also give serious advice to his classmates and help them understand how the schooling at Abington Heights School District was amazing.

Shane managed to fulfill his desire to go against the status quo with his amazing valedictorian speech. With the usage of jokes and advice in his speech, he was able to keep the audience’s attention throughout the duration of the speech. He also managed to continue the trend of giving advice. Shane gave his best effort to take advantage of his situation, and he made it work wonderfully.

1:08:03

As I understand, rhetoric refers back to the study and research of the written, spoken and also visual language. It is used to investigate how our language is utilized in order to maintain social groups and for other important aspects of social behavior.

In American society today, it is easier to find people studying and researching the written and spoken language of our people. These people are most commonly known as linguists, people who study every aspect of a language, including the grammar, the sound of the language, and how the language’s words develop over periods of time.

Rhetoric is vital in today’s society since it is the fundamental way of how different generations speak and write to each other. Today’s society has a more unique way of using language to maintain social groups. Nowadays, we use acronyms like “Lol” and “Idk” to express our type of language in American society. However, this does not only occur in American society. It happens all over the world internationally. Surrounding this matter in society today, our types of communication are all condensed into short forms of phrases or even emojis. This is our way of communicating with our generation of people. In order to better understand this issue, however, our society should try and improve our use of more literate phrases and complicated vocabulary instead of using the most simplest of words. Due to the use of simple words, our society’s rhetoric is low and underdeveloped. This is only way that we can improve the American’s society of rhetoric.

For example, the newer usage of smartphones allows for essential 24/7 communication, but it limits how much we can say. Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, and other social media platforms include emojis and GIFs. We’re seeing a transformation from face-to-face communication to one that is solely text-based. If you look around even here on campus, a lot of people are looking down at phones.

Issues around the country stem from this text based society. We see people all over social media making disrespectful comments and stupid remarks. Social media leads to what is known as “flame wars”. This is when two people over the internet argue and resort to more and more stupid remarks. In my honest opinion, this would never happen in face-to-face conversations.

In the end, social media leaves more room for interpretation of opinions.