Rhetorical Analysis Of Fake It

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For people to make change in the world, feel powerful, and accomplish what they want they need to at least try to accomplish these things even if it seems out of their reach. In Amy Cuddy’s speech Fake it till you Make it, she discusses how people have to fake being a certain way and doing certain things in order to reach the level of power and goals they desire to accomplish. Amy uses many different forms of persuasion through facts, emotion, personal experiences, and logical explanations to make her points more relevant and better reach the audience. Amy Cuddy persuades the audience of her argument, to “fake it till you make it” and all the aspects within that, through using visuals, personal experiences, and connections. Amy has many different …show more content…

At the beginning of her speech, Amy addresses the ideas of what interactions we focus on and become more intrigued with. Through visuals, she shows how we become intrigued with others’ body language, awkward interactions, and how we see body language as significant, and this leads to overall how we judge ourselves and judge others. This is a strong use of the pathos appeal in that, people realize how much they have judged body language in the past which will lead them to think about their own body language in the future. They begin to realize the impact of this body language and how they can use their body language to fake something to later make it. She then provides an example that uses both ethos and logos appeals. Using ethos she discusses the example of how if you were forced to hold a pen in your teeth to smile after a while it would make the person feel happy. This leads into her use of logos where she suggests that if this is true then if we were to fake being powerful eventually this would make the person feel actually powerful. These ideas lead into more detail when further …show more content…

To continue to persuade her point to the audience, Amy uses a strong factual approach with biological and philosophical facts to reach more of her audience. She discusses the differences in hormones, “we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies have high testosterone and low cortisol, and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol”. This is followed up with the explanation that how this power is used is dependent on how these power holders react to these stress hormones. She ends her speech using a personal experience that reaches the audience’s emotions. She discusses a personal story of hers where she had got into a car crash and had trauma to her head. She was told she was unable to complete college which was in her life plan. This made her feel powerless and struggle while she later was able to complete college. When she began to give talks she felt like she was not powerful enough to do it but when she was forced by her advisor to do it over time she eventually felt like she had the power to do it and was much more confident in giving her speeches. This proves how in the beginning she was faking her abilities and confidence and she eventually felt that she did truly have these abilities and confidence to accomplish these