Rhetorical Analysis Of The Ted Talk

“Languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. In fact, a language dies every 14 days" ("Patricia Ryan: Don't Insist on English!"). In the TED Talk “Don’t insist on English,” spoken by English professor Patricia Ryan, the topic of language loss and the globalization of English is closely examined. Ryan places emphasis on how teaching English has altered from being a profitable practice to becoming an extensively global movement. She speaks on behalf of the issues that come with having a monolingual society as well as the requirements of the English language and how it is becoming the basis of what society refers to as intelligence. Along with English becoming a global language, she goes on to discuss the ways that the language is affecting …show more content…
Enthymemes are a form of assumption that a rhetor may use to try and connect with an audience; they may also be considered to be nomos, which is a rhetorical concept that includes societal norms and customs. Patricia Ryan may use them to cover an area of uncertainty and to put herself in the same crowd as the listeners. One example of an enthymeme that she uses would be when she makes an assumption of what the audience believes in her statement, “So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally” ("Patricia Ryan: Don't Insist on English!"). She uses a few other enthymemes to connect with the audience and to get them to understand where she is coming from with her reasoning. Fallacies are very similar to enthymemes in that they are implied arguments as well as assumptions, however they are much more subtle. Ryan uses fallacies to cause the audience to question what is being stated due to her using of the Begging the Question fallacy. Begging the Question can be described as taking a conclusion and passing it off as a premise without formally knowing what has been established prior. For example, Ryan states the following, “Because, of course, the best jobs go to people out of the Western Universities” ("Patricia Ryan: Don't Insist on English!"). This is a fallacy because you are unsure if her statement is entirely true due to the fact that she has no way of backing up her statement. Following fallacies, Patricia Ryan uses casual reasoning, which is a form of writing technique that uses beliefs and makes an assumption. “This system equates intelligence with a knowledge of English” ("Patricia Ryan: Don't Insist on English!"). This sentence is a form of casual reasoning, the identification of casualties or relationships between cause and effect, because it is describing how people believe that if someone is intelligent they must speak English. This is a form of