Rhetorical Analysis Of Emily Smith's TED Talk

Life is About More than Being Happy
What makes people happy? How do people make themselves and others happy? Will money and success make people happy? For ages, society has assumed that the answer to living a successful life is to be happy. However, happiness is not all that a person needs to live a fulfilled life. For every person the answer to this question of “happiness” is defined differently. Emily Smith argues that people require more than just happiness to feel important in society. People need to feel that they have true meaning and purpose in society. The feeling of belonging and a sense of transcendence can drastically alter a person’s life story. Smith’s TED Talk is successful because she uses meaningful language, relatable examples, and her personal experiences to show her audience that there is more to life than just happiness.
A very important part of establishing the rhetoric of a piece is first identifying the authors intended audience, purpose, and context. The context, also known as the background for this piece, is that fewer people are living fulfilling lives. For example, “people putting the greatest emphasis on being happy …show more content…
Smith’s TED Talk is successful because she uses real life testimonies, intriguing statistics, and personal experience to show her audience that there is more to life than just happiness. She uses her authority as well as the audience’s emotions to make the genre relatable. Smith’s message can be extremely relatable because most people have times in their lives where they have felt empty, depressed or have that feeling like something is missing. This TED Talk can help people to find that sense of belonging and begin to discover what their purpose in society is. In time, that purpose will fill a void in people’s lives and provide that source of fulfillment that they have longed