Your name:

Omar Mohamed

Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change how you read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.

Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem.

The conversation the speaker responds to in this talk is his experiences having issues socializing, taking criticism personally, and allowing other’s statements to put him down and lower his self-esteem. This talk was uploaded in 2016. The speaker’s motivating/turn-around occasion was when he decided to face his fear of socializing and his insecurities and to put aside other people’s opinions about him and his accent.

Author: Who is the author of this text?  What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?

The speaker of this talk is Safwat Saleem, a visual artist. Saleem’s investment in the issue is his own personal experiences with social anxiety, stuttering, and criticism due to his accent and seeing criticism against minorities. Saleem also uses his work as a channel to get rid of these notions against minorities.

Text: What can you find out about the publication?  What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?

This talk was a TED talk presented at an official TED conference. These talks tend to be in the style of a speech towards an audience, which is how this talk was presented.

Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.

The author’s intended audience are the audience and viewers of TED, and more specifically may be those who think that having an accent or being a minority is not normal, and that normal people are only those who are not minorities.

Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?

The author is trying to challenge the pre-existing notion that minorities are not normal. I know this because he specifically states that that is the goal of his work during his talk.

Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take?

I believe the author’s main idea during his talk was to try to change people’s perspective on those who are minorities and do not speak in the same accent, or look the same way as some other people would expect them to. I also found that the talk may be motivating to those who have social anxiety themselves to face their fear like Saleem did.

Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.

The speaker’s argument is supported by statistics. For example, his argument that people who do not meet a specific set of expectations are not considered normal was supported when he presented the statistic that in 2013 and 2014, 8 and 11 percent of children’s books had a character of color.

Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does (consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does.

An aspect of Saleem’s talk that stood out for me was when he mentioned that even during the talk itself, he was anxious and would prefer to be secluded and alone. This strategically shows that even though he still has the fear of socializing, he faces and embraces it.

Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.

N/A

Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?

One thing I want to remember about this talk is the statistic that 8% and 11% of characters in books were of color in ’13 and ’14. It was very surprising to me how low the number is.