Rhetorical Analytic Conversation

A monkey, a chicken, and a goat walk into a bar. While waiting for their drink, they spark up an intricate conversation. What do they discuss? Who knows, they are animals for god’s sake. Although the contents of their conversation are unknown, there is one thing that is definite. There was some use of the rhetorical appeals. These appeals are literally everywhere—ranging from a simple conversation to a YouTube video—in a wide variety of forms that one uses when communicating. How one constructs the concepts they attempt to convey has can be instrumental to assembling an effective idea. Within the YouTube videos the history of the entire world, i guess created by bill wurtz’s, and The History and Future of Everything – Time, created by Kurzgesagt

In Kurzgesagt’s video, they cover a range from the year 2013 all the way back to the big bang in a span of about five minutes and twenty seconds. Due to the limited portion of time, they are only able to cover a very limited portion of world history, “The last 500 years of human history brought enormous changes to our lifestyles: Industrialization gave rise to new ideas like communism, farmers became workers and knowledge became easier to distribute. The theory of evolution changed how we saw ourselves and the world we live in. All in a few hundred years!” (Kurzgesagt, 1:30-1:50) The overall substance of history is somewhat underwhelming—damaging their credibility. However, they are able to make up for this lack of information through the overall sense of professionality. With the use of high level vocabulary along with the length of the sentence provides the audience with a sense of intellect coming from the narrator. Adding to this sense of credibility and intellect is the accent of the narrator. In the article Does your accent make you sound smarter? by Chi Luu, the concept of how one’s accent can impact how they are perceived is explored. The author explains that “…accents can be a shortcut that allows us to ‘linguistically profile’ others based on the stereotypes of their regional backgrounds, class, gender or ethnicity” (Luu). Due to how people with British accents are portrayed in various

Due to the abstract style and lack of professionality, wurtz must really solely on the information being presented. The video itself is able to cover the history from just before the big bang all the way to 2017 in a span of nineteen minutes and twenty seconds. Due to the pure length of the video, there is more room for history to be explored. However, due to the amount of time that must be covered in this time frame, the information must be presented at a rapid pace. In around eight seconds, wurtz is able to cover the basics of the United States Civil War and westward expansion, “The United States finally figured out whether slavery is good or bad. It’s bad, they decided. And then they continued to manifesting their destiny, which is to kill the rest of the natives and take their land and maybe kick out the Mexicans too” (wurtz, 15:37-15:45). Though the segment is lacking the finite details of this period, it is still able to cover a period of approximately twenty years in eight seconds all while providing a broad understanding to the audience. With the vast amount of accurate information being given, it gives wurtz a sense of authority on the topic of world history. Not only does vast amount of information and rapid rate at which is presented help wurtz establish