Mere months after the September 11th attacks on the United States, Alan Jackson released a song that he titled, “Where Were You?” He debuted the song on the Country Music Awards stage in November of 2001. The nation was crying out in shock and despair and Jackson joined in that cry with his song. In writing “Where Were you?” he did so in a time of national confusion. After the attack, a plethora of emotions poured out from each and every home. In light of this situation, Jackson attempted to try and find a common ground on which his listeners could share their anger and despair openly. Through a heavy rhetorical emphasis using ethos and pathos, he accomplished that in giving his listeners a standing ground on which they could grieve openly
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He doesn’t suggest the audience feel a certain way and, instead, allows them to remember their emotions on that day by themselves. By asking the questions that aide his ethos, he enables the song to create a sense of communal grief, which was his goal, and aiding his listeners to get over the incident. He extends the overall question of “where were you?” to both celebrities and the common American, in asking them to contemplate their reaction. He mentions a few, such as shock, relief, anger and hope. When he makes these suggestions of how his audience may feel, if it matches up with how they did, then they instantly may see this as a shared emotion. That alone enables the generation of a sense of community through the listeners while letting them feel that they are not alone in their …show more content…
With this, he successfully sets up a platform for his audience to relate to one another and share their feelings of the terrorist attacks. Jackson’s memoir, although a great one, could be even stronger if he used more factual evidence, or in other words, a logos-based argument. Jackson could have included more facts about the attacks or perhaps attempt to come up with a reason to why it had happened. However, seeing as this is a song, it is usually very hard to fit so much into something that is shorter than five minutes. On top of this, even today we still find it hard to find a logical reason as to why the 9/11 attacks happened in the first
He doesn’t suggest the audience feel a certain way and, instead, allows them to remember their emotions on that day by themselves. By asking the questions that aide his ethos, he enables the song to create a sense of communal grief, which was his goal, and aiding his listeners to get over the incident. He extends the overall question of “where were you?” to both celebrities and the common American, in asking them to contemplate their reaction. He mentions a few, such as shock, relief, anger and hope. When he makes these suggestions of how his audience may feel, if it matches up with how they did, then they instantly may see this as a shared emotion. That alone enables the generation of a sense of community through the listeners while letting them feel that they are not alone in their …show more content…
With this, he successfully sets up a platform for his audience to relate to one another and share their feelings of the terrorist attacks. Jackson’s memoir, although a great one, could be even stronger if he used more factual evidence, or in other words, a logos-based argument. Jackson could have included more facts about the attacks or perhaps attempt to come up with a reason to why it had happened. However, seeing as this is a song, it is usually very hard to fit so much into something that is shorter than five minutes. On top of this, even today we still find it hard to find a logical reason as to why the 9/11 attacks happened in the first