Ethan Sayers
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth started with him describing nature as a whole to his audience and creating a sense of feeling about nature. After he has really made us, the viewers, really think about the world we live in he then sets out into his reoccurring topic, global warming, known to some as, the climate change. During his presentation he begins to talk about his personal life and relates it, or tries to relate it, to the climate change. He talks about his life of pursuing more information about everything affected by the climate change. For example, he talks about Greenland’s glacier caps slowly eroding away. He also talked about how its creating stronger storms as a whole an example of this as he stated was, Katrina, the hurricane that struck New Orleans. He explains that the water temperatures and water levels have come to create stronger storms. Throughout his presentation he continues to back up his statements with examples and facts to back it up. Then in his closing it sounded like he took a more direct route towards the audience. He was more serious and had a different tone in his voice. One of his last sentences that really caught my eye was him saying that the climate change was “different from any problem we [people as a whole] have ever faced before”. During his presentation he used three major tools, pathos, logos and ethos. All three played a specific role in his presentation as a whole, pathos to spread an emotional appeal to us, the viewers. He also used ethos to make him stand out as a character. Then logos which would help build his credibility.
Throughout his presentation he had several examples to help build his logos. For example, when he talked about a teacher he had in college, Roger Revelle, a well-known scientist for his research in in global warming. Having him as a teacher and helping him conduct experiments was something Al described as, one of the things that pushed his curiosity to pursue more information towards the climate change. This helps with his logos because it builds a professional background in the eyes of his audience. Another example of his use of logos is all of the charts to show temperature and carbon dioxide rising rapidly. One chart he showed was the chart of the ten hottest years in the world. So he would present a new topic about something and then he would finish it off by showing proof for that topic. He was very dedicated to this topic and did a lot of work to prove his findings.
One thing Al promoted very well was his use of pathos. For example, he used his sons near death experience in the very beginning of his presentation to describe how his son may have never seen “our world” again. He then goes into how further generations will not be able to see “our world” in the future because of the climate change. No more glaciers and what not. Although in my opinion bringing up his sons accident to promote pathos wasn’t a very strong standing point, but it got the audience thinking about the children of the future in some aspect. Another example of this is something he brought up in the very end to motivate the audience to make a change in their life. He began to talk about how “we” were destroying our home, the earth. He pointed out that we only have one home and without it, we have nothing.
Then there is ethos, how Al represented himself in his presentation. Well in my opinion it varied within topic to topic. For example, when he talked about his son or his sister’s death, he was more emotional. Then towards the end he was more straight forward and more powerful in his words, as if he was demanding us to make a change in the world not only for ourselves but for the earth as a whole. Another example is when he was presenting charts or evidence of some sort; he seemed to move more slow and explanatory. That way he got the whole audience to understand what was being shown, as if he was a teacher and we were his students.
All in all, All Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, was a very informative presentation of the topic we know as global warming or as the climate change. Throughout his presentation he gave many examples and a lot of proof to back up his findings as well to build his logos. He also put a lot of emotion into the audiences head, whether it was talking about the polar bears drowning and his son’s accident. He found a way to instill some sort of emotion into us and build his pathos. Then there was the way he presented himself, he would change his tone or his speech pattern within topic to topic. Such as his emotional tone versus his straight forward tone. It just varied topic to topic to build his ethos. His presentation was very informative and put together very well, and I bet he has reached out to many citizens not only in the U.S but in countries around the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment