Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Many people often face discrimination for how they sound, no matter how strong their message is. We can face examples of this in schools, interviews, workplaces, and any conversation. People often determine how smart a person is based on their voice. In the TED Talk “Why I Keep Speaking Up, Even When People Mock My Accent,” Safwat Saleem shares his personal experience to show how serious this is, using his emotional appeal and rhetorical skills.

The speaker, Safwat Saleem talks about how people with different accents are sometimes treated unfairly, which shouldn’t be happening. He argues that the way you talk or sound shouldn’t have anything to do with how you’re getting treated. Saleem points out that many people consider accents that are different or unfamiliar to them as abnormal  and annoying, which shows the bias that is being carried out. Saleem is a Pakistani TED fellow, Visual artist and filmmaker. For the publication, He supports his argument using the genre of Public Speech Conference, which he used to share personal experiences of how he has been getting treated as someone with an accent from his childhood to current life and helps his audience understand how much of a negative impact these judgements bring. 

One of the main points Saleem makes in his speech is how language discrimination and accent bias affect people personally. This speech was made in a TED Talk in 2016 and the main reason is to respond to language discrimination and the way people with accents are normally seen as annoying and are treated unfairly. The exigence for his speech would be from Saleem’s personal experiences of being treated differently and discriminated against just because of how his voice sounds. He shares stories from his childhood and current life, bringing up how he struggled to speak fluently and sometimes stuttered, which made him feel embarrassed and excluded. According to Saleem, “ I spent my childhood feeling that if I spoke, it would become obvious that there was something wrong with me, that I was not normal. So I mostly stayed quiet” (Saleem). Saleem felt pressured to hide his voice because society made him believe his way of speaking was something to be ashamed of. This illustrates how negatively accent discrimination can affect people’s confidence and their will to express themselves.

Saleem’s main argument is that these discriminations heavily affect people. The intended audience consists of a bunch of different types of people. For example, Pakistani-Americans like him, speakers, students adapting into a new country/neighborhood with a different way of speaking,  people who have been experienced for their accents, people that believe that one’s way of speaking should affect the way they are getting treated. He targets this large audience to call to action, helping us understand how accent discrimination negatively shapes people, and is wrongfully seen as normal.

Saleem uses a rhetorical concept of imagery, to evidently describe his personal experiences. According to Saleem in the beginning of his speech, “I used to have this recurring dream where I’d walk into a roomful of people, and I’d try not to make eye contact with anyone… And the person walks up to me, and says, “Hi, my name is So-and-so. And what is your name?” And I’m just quiet, unable to respond…” (Saleem). This dream he had reflects on how nervous he was in real life when he talks to people and how he was scared of being embarrassed or misunderstood because of how he sounded. This illustrates the fear and pressure he felt about speaking out and being noticed. By using imagery to appeal to our senses, Saleem allows us, the audience, to imagine and feel exactly what it looked and felt like to be in that situation. 

Saleem also uses a rhetorical concept of repetition in the speech. He repeatedly uses the phrase “every time” to show how usually these experiences happened to him; it’s stuck in his memory. He stated, “Every time the phone rang, I would run to the bathroom so I would not have to answer it… Every time I record audio, I fumble my way through saying each sentence many, many times…. “I recorded my audio, but every time I sat down to edit, I just could not do it” (Saleem). We can imply that he’s expressing how his fear and low confidence has stuck with him, even in everyday situations. This implies the use of repetition to show what he goes through as someone with an accent.

Both of these rhetorical concepts that were used answers the ‘So what?’ question. Repeating phrases and creating pictures of ideas shows the audience that his struggle was an embarrassment that happened too often which affected his self confidence. This would matter to anyone who has often or once faced bias for how they speak, reminding the audience how our words and discrimination can have deep long-term effects on others.