Rhetorical Analysis Of Drifting As A Rising Sport

Rhetorical Analysis: Drifting as a Rising Sport

Aristotle himself would be proud of Ryan Duval’s “Dialogue and Argument Project.” It starts off one morning with the smell of bacon in the air, Ryan and his father Steve flip through channels on the tv and stumble across a car drifting channel. Ryan is fascinated by it but Steve thinks it’s dumb and wonders how they even judge it. Ryan then explains that once you understand how the sport works, it no longer looks dumb. Steve then complies and asks Ryan to find more drifting videos so he can try to understand the sport. In his argument Ryan not only convinces his father that drifting is a great and upcoming sport but also brings awareness to his audience (in this case, his fellow classmates and

His understanding of the context allows him to go into the depth and give the reader a picture in their head, and that includes not just the setting but who the characters are as well. With a good understanding of rhetorical situation Duval allows the reader to picture what a character looks like, sounds like, and even be able to have a general idea of what a character's interests are. Duval sets the stage at the beginning by stating, “It’s a sunday morning at about 10 am. The smell of freshly cooked bacon has made its way upstairs into the bedrooms. You can faintly hear the music coming from the kitchen as well, it’s Alice in Chains, must be the dad, Steve” (Duval). With these lines it is very easy for the reader to picture the setting of this story as if they were there themselves but also the reader can tell that Ryan’s dad Steve has an interest in Alice in Chains. This goes to show how Duval had his intended audience in mind when describing the setting and characters. But how does the argument start? The argument starts when Steve and Ryan stumble across a drifting channel and Steve says a remark about drifter, “Oh yeah he was in the inner track with the drifting school. They looked so dumb compared to everyone I was racing with on the real track” (Duval). Ryan knew Steve would take a jab at drifting, and now he would need to back his stance on it and he would

In Duval’s dialogue he demonstrates logos many times, one time when he says, “Look! That guy is drifting a Ferrari and his team is sponsored by a bunch of the same companies that work with Formula 1 and Nascar! I bet they have a huge budget. Definitely looks like the sport is growing a lot” (Duval). Through the simple word “look,” it doesn't get any more obvious that Ryan is displaying logos as he shows Steve that drag racing is really growing and may not be as dumb as he thinks, even Steve agrees that the growth of drifting is impressive. Ryan then displays more reasoning when he says, “I think if I help make more sense of how it works, the competition wouldn’t look silly to you. Remember when we watched uncle's jiu-jitsu tournament? I complained about how it looked stupid but once you explained some of the choke holds and submissions it started to make sense to me. I feel like this is the same thing right?” (Duval). By referring back to another event that both Ryan and Steve understand, Ryan was able to really get Steve to back down from his stance and understand where Ryan was coming from. This eventually causes Steve to decide that maybe he should learn more about the sport of drifting before he continues to “jab at it.” Logos is critical in an argument, some arguments can almost be successful just with it, but the most successful ones appeal to all elements of Pathos, Ethos, and even other rhetorical