Rhetorical analysis - Essay Example

The author of the tube effectively uses pathos and logos to convince students that they should stop drinking bottled water because it harms their finances, health, and environment. The rhetorical situation concerns the purpose of the video’s author, which is to persuade University of Arizona students that they should stop drinking bottled water because of the belief in bottled water’s numerous bad effects on drinkers and the environment. The author is a student of University of Arizona. He studied the pros and cons of bottled water using legitimate references.

He concludes that bottled water’s disadvantages outweigh its advantages. The context includes the bottled-water drinking culture that is popular in developed countries, as well as in the university campus. The exigence is that not many people are aware of the negative impacts of bottled water, especially when clean tap water is available. The author wants to correct this lack of awareness through a YouTube video. The genre is through YouTube because it is easy to use and can reach a large audience.

Since target audiences are common YouTube users, the author can access them through this video. The video can also include emotional elements that cannot be easily added to print materials, such as music and changing images. It is a genre that can have a large appeal to students. Furthermore, the author seeks to influence the target audience, who are University of Arizona students, to change their bottled-water drinking habits. Since there are around 40,000 students, the author believes that together, they can make a difference (Zhang).

If they stop drinking bottled water every day, they can seriously reduce the effects of bottled water on their health, money, and school community (Zhang). In addition, the relations exist, where consumers have a large impact on the bottled water industry. Individually, they have no power. The bottled water industry is large enough to use advertisements and other marketing promotions to promote the pros of bottled water over tap water, without mentioning the pros of tap water at all. The power of the target audience lies in their number and collective action.

Thus, the rhetorical situation relies on the need to resolve the problems of bottled water. The author effectively uses pathos, specifically through music, images, and emotional words, to inform students about the consequences of bottled water and to emphasize their role in stopping it. The music is soothing, as if trying to relax the audience. The aim is to open their minds to the realities of bottled water. The music seeks to emphasize that the beauty of their health and the world rely on their action of drinking tap, not bottled, water.

The author also relates statistics to student lives. After computing the cost of drinking bottled water a year, the video says that the expense is equal to a student’s rent payment (Zhang). The result is a strong emotional impact due to the connection between money spent on bottled water to money spent on rent. Images of students are actively used too to stress student’s participation in bottled water use. The images of happy students at the beginning indicate that they have an active role in ensuring this happiness through not drinking bottled