Rhetorical Analysis Of Aria By Richard Rodriguez

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“Aria” by Richard Rodriguez is an essay that shows the readers a part of life that many have never experienced. Rodriguez uses this essay to show how he fights through his childhood tounderstand English. He faces society while forfeiting his happy home life trying to become a typical English-speaking student.He establishes a connection with the audience through his personal experience as a child. He uses imagery and narration to clarify his opposition to bilingual education .Rodriguez also uses the three traditional means of rhetorical persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos to create a sense of moralcharacter,appeals to the audience’s feelingsand add more logic to his work.
The author, a native Spanish speaker strongly speaks out against bilingual education. His position is based on his belief that “language gets learned as it gets used” (467). In other words, the learners master the language as they talk with other people and interact with them. Thepurpose is also to make an attempt at showing the English speaking Americans that it
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He talks about a time when two or three of his neighbors tried to make his family feel unwelcomed by “saying keep your brats away from my sidewalk”(468). This phrase makes the reader feel sympathy for Rodriguez and his family.
Richard Rodriguez appeals to logos in substantiating his argument.He uses this device when describing language and the words he says that they can beabridged to the sounds they made of and that the meaning of a word is not the actual meaning. This is a logical conclusion when he discusses words in a manner of the sounds thatmake.
Rodriguez creates imagesas a rhetorical strategy to show how much he struggles trying to get a perfect pronunciation. “Tongues explored the edges of words, especially the fat vowels” (466). This use of Imagery illustratesthe idea of how a people speak when they are struggling with some

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