Rebecca Galan

Professor Tomei
Part One:
Analysis of the Rhetorical Proofs
12 Dec 2014
We are Marshall
In the movie "We are Mashall", the coach addresses his football team in a motivational
speech. The coach has assembled these players at the memorial site for the fallen players in order
to set the overall tone. His intent is to move use a tragic event, the death of players, as a driving
force rather than a hindering one. The coach uses ethos, pathos, and logos beautifully
throughout his speech showing leadership, evoking emotion, , and getting focus from the boys.
A very important component of any speech is establishing credibility through ethos
which the coach does in various forms. Ethos is used as a basis for why the audience should
listen to the speaker, or what makes them an expert for the topic of the speech being given. From
the beginning of his speech the coach uses phrases such as, "we are Marshalls" and "our path".
By including himself he shows he is one of them and it brings the connection to a more personal
level. The coach establishes himself as an expert to attest to their hearts by pointing out, "I have
seen it, you have shown it to me, you have shown our coaching staff, [and] your teammates". By
stating this he provides evidence that he knows what he is talking about because it has been
shown to him personally, as well as to others. He further provides credibility for the six players
who had died, and whose memorial site they are at, by introducing them as: "six players, six

teammates, six sons of Marshall". This takes the identity of six dead bodies to a credible source
by naming them players, a general connection to the audience; teammates, a more personal
connection to the audience, and lastly sons of Marshall, a family-like connection to the audience.
With these connections made through identity and credibility he now strengthens his speech and
the impact it has on the audience.
One of the most prominent and most effective rhetorical proofs the coach uses throughout
his speech is pathos. Pathos is the use of words, phrases, tones, examples, etc that evoke an
emotional response from the audience. The coach uses ethos from the moment he begins his
speech. He opens his speech by recalling the death of six players; he explains, "this is the final
resting place [...] the plane crash that took their lives was so severe -so absolute, that their bodies
were unable to be identified". Using this tragedy as his opening statement the coach sets the
emotional tone to a mournful one. He uses words like final to show the permanency of their
deaths, and severe to describe the depth of the trauma. By causing the audience to feel sorrowful
it makes them vulnerable and more open to the rest of the speech. He then evolves this sorrow to
hope and determination by expressing the following:
"[The players who have past] will be watching [...] They'll be gritting their teeth
with every snap of that football [...] How you play today, from this moment on, is
how you'll be remembered [...] This is your opportunity to rise from the ashes and
grab glory".
This is how he uses emotion to inspire the audience to thrive. He transitions from a mournful
view of the dead players to one of hope and aspiration. He gives the audience hope from this
memorial to go and make something of themselves.

The final component of the rhetorical triangle is logos which the coach uses to show the
audience they can overcome their situation. Logos is the logical rhetorical proof; it is when you
use quotes, statistics, and historical facts to provide a solid, logical point. The coach points
introduces the dead players as, "[the] six members of the 1970 Thundering herd". This provides
historical, concrete background information used to establish a logical point. He then moves
forward to later discuss the audience's opponent, describing them as "bigger, faster, stronger,
more experienced, and on paper just better". The reason he does this is to show that statistically it
has been recorded that their opponent is that astounding, but it set up in a way that he then
explains that none of that adds up to their hearts on the field. So he uses logic as a way to better
encourage them to play with all their heart.
The coach from "We are Marshall" did an exquisite job incorporating ethos, pathos, and
logos into his speech to the players. He made sure to establish not only his own credibility, but
also the credibility of the dead players to better connect to the players. He used pathos to evoke
sorrow and mourning so that he could then turn it into inspiration and motivation for the players.
And he uses historical background information and statistical information to make his key points
stronger. Overall, he intertwined these rhetorical proofs flawlessly and delivered an inspirational
speech that motivated these players to play with all their hearts no matter what.

Rebecca Galan
Professor Tomei
Part Two:
Analysis of the Rhetorical Analysis
12 Dec 2014
We Need to Talk About an Injustice
When writing and delivering a speech it is important to impliment rhetorical concepts.
This is the bridge between the speaker's content and how they want the audience to interpret it.
In Bryan Stevenson's speech on TED regarding injustice he uses a variety of rhetorical concepts
to strengthen his speech. Among these concepts, Stevenson used Rhetorical Cannons,
Toulmin's Model of Argument, Rhetorical Situation, and non-factual sources in order to
further his speech and its impact on the audience.
Stevenson integrated rhetorical cannons into his speech through the use of an antithesis,
parallelism, and anaphoras to simplify concepts he presented. Rhetorical cannons focus on the
actual style of writing in the speech. When explaining to the audience that the justice system is
this country is unjust, Stevenson uses the antithesis: "[this country] treats you much better if
you're rich and guilty, than if you're poor and innocent". An antithesis is a contrast between two
things; in this case, he is contrasting the better treatment of those who are rich and guilty to the
mistreatment of those who are poor and innocent. He does this as a sort of simple summary
statement of the topic of injustice he was discussing. Parallelism is used to describe a
corresponding structure of a sentence. This rhetorical cannon is depicted in one of Stevenson's

concluding ideas, "if you're a teacher your words can be meaningful, if you're a compassionate
teacher they can be especially meaningful; if you're a doctor you can do some good things, but if
you're a caring doctor you can do some other good things". Setting up this idea using parallelism
allows the audience to easily follow the comparison using this corresponding structure. Another
common rhetorical cannon Stevenson used often throughout his speech was anaphoras. An
anaphora is the repetition of a phrase in a series of statements for emphasis on an idea. When
Stevenson repeated, "it's not our problem, it's not our burden, it's not our struggle", he
emphasized the constant lack of responsibility in humans' identities. Using rhetorical cannons is
a way for Stevenson to strengthen his speech's impact on the audience through his style of
writing.
Various times throughout Stevenson's speech he organized his arguments in what's called
Toulmin's Model of Argument. This is a 'claim, data, warrant' method of organization. He
demonstrated this in one of his key claims, "we [as American] are unwilling to commit ourselves
to a process of truth or reconciliation". To provide data for this claim he goes on to discuss a
scholar's response to a lecture he was giving in Germany. The scholar responded, "we don't have
the death penalty in Germany and of course we can never have [it] in Germany. There's no way
with our history we could ever engage in the systematic killing of human beings. It would be
unconsciousable ". That is the example, or data, he used to back up his claim. Warrant is a
summary statment to connect both the claim and the data, which he did by ending with, " It
would be unconsciousable. Yet in this country, [...] we execute people. There are states that have
buried in the ground the bodies of people who were lynched and yet there is this disconnect".
This is a very organized and easy to follow method of organization when giving a speech, which
Stevenson incorporated numerous times.

Stevenson's speech fit into a rhetorical situation or triangle because it had a speaker, a
message, an audience, and a purpose. The speaker coordinates with ethos. Bryan Stevenson is the
speaker and he is a lawyer who spends a lot of his cases in the area of poverty and black
communities. He has a lot of experiences with the justice system and the prison system. The
overall message is that there is an importance of identity that has to be shaped. The audience is
the citizens of America who need to be awakened, who need to be aware, who need to be at
tentative to the injustice going on around them. The purpose behind this importance of identity
for Americans is to fight the injustice that has been going on for too long in this country. The
rhetorical situation is the overall tie between all the elements of the speech.
Nonfactual sources is a very common element for speakers to use in their speeches, and
which Stevenson himself did use countless times. A nonfactual source is any example that
excludes facts and statistics. Therefore nonfactual sources can be narratives, visuals, examples,
expert testimonies, and lay testimonies. An expert testimony is from someone who has
credibility in the topic. A lay testimony is anyone who is not an expert. One nonfactual source
that Stevenson used frequently was narratives. Toward the beginning of his speech he told the
story of his grandmother helping him develop his identity. This narrative helped the audience
understand that other people have a big influence on one's identity. Toward the middle of his
speech, once again he tells a narrative about Rosa Parks giving him hope by telling him to
always be brave in what he stood for. He told this narrative to help inspire the audience to stand
strong against injustice.
All in all, Bryan Stevenson used an abundance of rhetorical concepts throughout his
speech. Some of the most prominent were Rhetorical Cannons, Toulmin's Model of Argument,
Rhetorical Situation, and non-factual sources. He used these in order to enhance and strengthen

his speech. The use of rhetorical concepts can help create a bigger impact on the audience in a
way that the speaker intended it to. It can also make the content easier for the audience to
understand.