Topic Proposal

For my narrative, I would like to write about a car accident I was in with my dad a few years ago. The other driver, a 20 year old  kid on a motorcycle, was fatally injured during the accident. I would like to do unsafe driving as the exigence. I've never really talked much about this event because of how emotional it can be to think about, but I feel as if writing a paper about it may help me to finally get past it. The purpose is to inform people about how dangerous it can be to speed while driving any sort of vehicle. The audience will specifically be younger drivers but it can certainly apply to drivers of all ages.

Mein Kampf Assignment

Burke looks at Mein Kampf from a rhetorical perspective by looking for Hitler’s effective use of language in order to persuade the German population. Burke breaks down his methods into four specific sections of how Hitler both subtly and bluntly provides propaganda to the German people against the Jewish population. Hitler dubs the Jews as an inferior race that can only poison true-blooded Aryans. He also condemns “Jewish finance”, laying the country’s economic woes onto the shoulders of the Jews. In this way Hitler became very convincing, by saying both personally and economically that the Jews will cause harm to the Aryan race. He allowed the German people to project their troubles onto the backs of a scapegoat, the Jews. He convinced them that they did not need to do anything differently, but rather that if the Jewish people were taken out of the picture that all Aryans would flourish.

A general piece of rhetoric that I dislike that is loosely used by nearly every insurance company is this ridiculous idea that somehow every single company can save you money if you switch from another company. I can see how these are popular and also effective marketing campaigns because the bottom line is people like to save money. Somebody out there is bound to be convinced that fifteen minutes can definitely save them fifteen percent or more on car insurance or that on average everyone saves four hundred dollars just by switching to this specific company. If these things were true then there would only be one company in existence because obviously all of the rest are overcharging by exorbitant amounts. The audience behind these commercials is America as a whole or more specifically anyone who owns a car, boat, house, etc. that needs insurance. The exigence that exists here is that people pay a whole lot of money for insurance on the things that they value and each insurance company wants their thousands of dollars of “what if” money.