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Rhetorical Analysis Essay Rhetorical Analysis Masse 1 Emily Masse Professor Jackman English 503.03 27 September 2017 Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are; A Rhetorical Analysis Everyone has been in a situation where they feel on top of the world, powerful, and unstoppable. Our bodies communicate that feeling by opening up, arms extended and chin high. In contrast, everyone has been in a situation where they feel miserable, powerless, and defeated. Our bodies communicate that feeling by shrinking, wrapping arms and legs together and hunching towards the ground. Science has proven time and time again that our body reflects our emotional status, but what if it can work both ways? Can the way we position our body influence our mind in how powerful we feel? In a 2012 TED Talk by Amy Cuddy, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are, Cuddy uses strategies such as logos, ethos, pathos, media/design, and purpose to effectively argue that body language and mindset can shape who you are and your outcomes in life. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, lecturer, and New York Times bestselling author who studied at Princeton University. She is a professor at Harvard Business School and has focused her research on the power of nonverbal behavior and the ways in which people affect their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Cuddy’s breakthrough achievement in the social sciences was discovering how the concept of “fake it ’till you make it” actually has profound effects on our lives. Several of her experiments involving nonverbal behavior were mentioned in Rhetorical Analysis Masse 2 this TED Talk, where participants utilized powerful body stances and weak body stances in a series of tests to determine how physical assertions affect our mentality. (“Amy Cuddy”) Cuddy noticed that, physiologically, hormones had a great deal to do with our nonverbal expressions of power and dominance. The hormone testosterone relates to feelings of dominance and the hormone cortisol relates to levels of stress. The overwhelmingly clear outcome of this test was that participants in a “high-power” physical pose (shoulders square, arms wide, overall strong stature) had a 20% increase in testosterone and a 25% decrease in cortisol. Participants in “low-power” physical poses (hunched over, arms crossed, curled up) had a 10% decrease in testosterone and a 15% increase in cortisol. In her studies, Cuddy ultimately proved that body language can shape who you are and how you feel at a given time in your life. In delivering her findings and overall argument via TED Talk, Cuddy utilized multiple strategies in persuading her audience to use this potentially life-changing information. Logos, or logic-based reasoning, appears throughout the first two thirds of this speech to give a solid scientific background to Cuddy’s argument that body language and mindset shapes who you are and what you get out of life. The first kinds of logic-based reasoning Cuddy uses are facts and data through examples. She first offers the findings of a Tufts University researcher Nalini Ambady, who studied how people react to body language in patient-physician encounters. Reference to this study is followed by research from Alex Todorov at Princeton, who found that a political candidate’s body language determines the outcome of many U.S. elections. Cuddy expands upon the facts and data with examples which align our behavior with that of the animal kingdom in the following example, “What are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? So in the animal kingdom, they are about expanding. So you make yourself big…What do we do when we feel powerless? We close up…so again, both animals and humans do the same thing” Rhetorical Analysis Masse 3 (Cuddy). These facts and examples help paint a picture as to how body language and nonverbal behavior have been studied before and how those findings are relevant to understanding her argument. Cuddy also uses cause and effect based reasoning to deliver the main points of her speech. “If an individual needs to take over an alpha role sort of suddenly, within a few days, that individual’s testosterone has gone up significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly. So we have this evidence, both that the body can shape the mind, and also that role changes can shape the mind.” Through this example, she shows that hormones within the body can effect the mind. To conclude her speech, Cuddy argues that the cost of taking two minutes in a “high- power pose” can lead to big benefits and positive changes in a person’s life. “The last thing I’m going to leave you with is this. Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes. So, this is two minutes. Two minutes.” It is repeated to the audience that two minutes of an altered physical stance is all that it takes to configure your brain to cope in the best way during a stressful situation. This cost is very minimal to the benefits it could reap, so it is an effective persuasive strategy to conclude her argument. Another effective tool that Cuddy used throughout the beginning of her talk was language to establish ethos, or credibility as a speaker. After opening the speech with visual anecdotes, at the three-minute mark Cuddy included, “I’m a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach at a competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics.” In once sentence, she delivers a small portion of both personal experience and research credentials in this field, in addition to being a respected professor. This one sentence lays the platform for her audience to believe and respect what she has to say, and can rely on her being knowledgeable about the topic. Before she produced this sentence for personal ethos, she Rhetorical Analysis Masse 4 cited two researchers and their early studies in nonverbal behavior, demonstrating an appeal to experts. Additionally, three minutes later, she adds, “so my main collaborator, Dana Carney, who’s at Berkeley, and I really wanted to know…” This gives the impression that it is not just Cuddy studying this and coming up with conclusions, but is working with a respected researcher from Berkeley on board with these ideas. This furthers her personal credentials and appeal to experts. Cuddy uses pathos, emotion based statements, in narrative form to convince her audience that body language shapes your mindset and outcomes in life. This use of personal storytelling came towards the end of her speech trailing an influx of logos and ethos. The audience already believes she is a credible source who has presented a logical argument, so all that is left to drive her argument home is the emotional appeal. “I want to tell you a little story about being an imposter and feeling like I’m not supposed to be here… [story about car accident brain injury depleting her IQ, making it almost impossible to finish college] I felt entirely powerless, I worked and worked…I graduated from college and ended up at Princeton…even if you’re terrified you must say ‘Oh my gosh, I’m doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.’” The audience had a positive emotional reaction to her extremely personal story with applause and cheering. Cuddy went on to tell the story of a student of hers at Harvard, who never spoke in class and felt completely defeated and ready to fail. This touched Cuddy personally as she reflected upon her own struggles and how mindset and determination helped her against all odds. Tearing up, she continued, “[the student] said ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ And that was the moment for me…I realized, oh my gosh I don’t feel like that anymore. But she does, and I get that feeling. She is supposed to be here! Like, she can fake it, she can become it.” Cuddy ultimately Rhetorical Analysis Masse 5 helped this student achieve in the classroom simply by changing her mindset. In these stories, she strategically utilizes the “fear of loss” emotion, where many people can relate to feeling lonely, out of place, and vulnerable at some point in their lives. She also demonstrates the “promise of gain” emotion, where the kind of life you want to live can be achieved through mindset and body language. Both kinds of emotional appeals were placed the end of the speech before tying her ideas together in conclusion. This format is particularly powerful because it emphasizes the authenticity of her discoveries through real-life examples by tugging at the audiences’ heartstrings. Media and design played a role in the delivery of the speaker’s argument throughout the TED Talk. At the beginning, imagery on presentation screens helped display some of Cuddy’s main talking points and introduce the topic she was about to delve into. These images were presented in humorous and easy-to-understand ways. She used the screens to demonstrate the body stances often referenced throughout the speech, seen below in Figures 1 and 2. Cuddy also used her own body to demonstrate examples within her argument, seen below in Figures 3 and 4. Figure 1 Figure 2 Rhetorical Analysis Masse 6 Figure 3 Figure 4 Another way in which Cuddy utilized media and design was towards the end to highlight key concepts and takeaways from her argument. She did this by displaying simple words and phrases as a means of concluding her speech, seen below in Figures 5 and 6. Figure 5 Figure 6 When delivering a speech, an author or speaker has a rhetorical choice whether to use some sort of imagery or slides to accompany their arguments.
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