Spanish Americans in the USA
Spanish Americans are ranked eighth in terms of population in the USA. Their roots in the country can be attributed to the mass immigration that happened after independence. Spanish people in the country have been forced to learn English, making them bilingual. However, there has been a constant misunderstanding between the Americans and Spanish people since the 18th Century. In the article “The Beauty of Being Bilingual” published on 20th September 2019 and narrated by Natalia Sylvester, the author bring out struggles of Spanish Americans in the country. She is a Peruvian-American writer who can speak both English and Spanish. She has worked in various establishments such as Goodwill, Costco, and Wal-Mart, where she has interacted with both the American and Spanish people. Throughout the article, she argues how conflicts between these two races can be resolved by a third party that understands both languages. Her audience consists of the American and Spanish American people that are at constant battle because of the existing language barrier between them. Her targeted audience is evident in the article “The Beauty of Being Bilingual,” where she continually refers to these two races in her personal experience in different situations. With this information and experience, she persuades the readers to see the importance of understanding both languages. The organization of this paper consists of how the speaker explains the evidence used in her presentation. It also shows how she connects various facts into a unique sequence, and the way the provided clusters of information are necessary for proving a purpose. Her arguments will appeal to the audience in terms of emotions and also logically.
The author uses ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to the audience. She also uses various rhetorical strategies to emphasize her claims and make the audience agree with them. She is aware of the tension that exists between the Spanish people and the Americans in terms of the language difference, and she carefully chooses how to use the rhetorical strategies and mix them to capture the audience’s attention. She uses pathos to get an emotional response from the audience.
Pathos is a technique where the author relies on the audience’s emotion to appeal to them (Gottweis, 247). When the author gives a touching story of her background where her mother made every effort to ensure that they did not forget Spanish, it is an element of pathos because it creates an emotional attachment with the audience. She explains the struggles she faced together with her sister and mother in their one-bedroom apartment in her childhood years, where her mum forced them to speak Spanish at home. Every time they spoke English, her mother would say “No te entiendo”. It meant that she did not understand English. By the use of Spanish in her article, the speaker gains the trust of the audience since she proves her ability to speak the foreign language. The emotions of the audience are raised when she says, despite their struggle to speak both languages, they graduated from English “in record time.”
By using the phrase “record time,” the author uses hyperbole as a rhetorical strategy where she exaggerates the time it took for them to graduate from English. The emotional attachment created by the author from her background and the use of hyperbole appeals to the audience. It makes them curious to follow on the remaining part of the story.
She also uses pathos to appeal to the audience when she described a scenario when she worked at Goodwill, where a young mother came to shop at the store and needed her help persuasively. The young mother wanted to leave a diaper bin next to the register because it was cumbersome for her as she shopped. The author says she struggled to push her baby’s carriage while buying. At the same time, she was “lugging the big box.” Pathos is used here because the author raises the emotions of the audience (Gottweis, 247). She achieves this by painting to them a picture of how the cashier from Goodwill refused to grant her permission to leave the bin next to the register. It was despite the difficult time she was experiencing. This was because of a misunderstanding in terms of language. Both the young woman and the cashier could not understand each other. However, the author retains the audience’s attention by showing how she helped in this crucial moment. Because of her bilingual ability, she was able to help in the situation by interpreting the Spanish words the young woman was saying to the cashier who only understood English. It created a happy feeling for the audience to know that someone needed help and received it.
The other persuasive appeal the author uses is logos. It is a technique where facts or figures are used by the author to support their claim (Gottweis, 246). It appeals to the audience because the facts presented by the author makes the author look prepared and knowledgeable. The data need to be accurate. The author provides the fact that bilingual people face challenges everywhere. She achieves this by quoting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a famous representative for New York. The representative said on Twitter that Spanish was her first language while she was growing up. She says she has to “continuously work” on it so that she improves. It is a fact presented to the audience to support claims by the author that being bilingual is beneficial, and notable figures work hard at it to become better and more useful. By quoting a renowned personality, the author appeals to the audience because she did research and prepared before writing the article.
Logos is also used to appeal to the audience where the author refers to videos on social media that are circulating where we see Americans harassing Spanish people at restaurants and supermarkets. The author shows a fact because the videos show white supremacy and are among the causes of strain between the Americans and Spanish people. It is because of the communication barrier. The audience gets appealed because they can prove these facts (Gottweis, 246). They can visit YouTube and search for these videos to verify the information presented by the author.
The author also uses ethos as an effective appeal means by proving her credibility to the audience. Ethos is crucial because it makes the author appear trustworthy in front of the audience (Gottweis, 246). She uses historical facts to show how Spanish people have had a long journey to learn English to fit into society and become useful in various situations. The author says they get laughed at when they visit their cousins in Latin America. She even goes one generation down the line when children were beaten in Florida for speaking Spanish. She then goes even further to another generation below that where Mexicans were subjected to a state-sanction. It was because of their race in the late 1800 in Texas. It makes the audience trust the author because these are historical facts that happened. Lastly, the presenter uses amplification as a rhetorical strategy when she says she used to think that the reason she thought she was a writer because she was bilingual, but she now sees it is more and more deep than that. She repeats the word “more and more” to emphasize her point and keep the audience hooked until the end.
In conclusion, the use of persuasive appeals by the author to convince the audience through logic and emotion is effective. She achieves this by using all the rhetorical devices pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos is a technique of convincing the audience to believe a claim by raising their emotional state. Logos is a device where facts or figures are used by the author to support their claim. Lastly, ethos is a technique where the author uses attitudes and a set of ideas associated with a group of people to appeal to them. Through her good mix in use of these devices, she gains the trust of her audience. It is because their values align with her sentiments. However, her opinions are based on her personal experience and not a reflection whole audience’s experience. There are people in the targeted audience that have not faced similar problems, and this can complicate the wanted results. Such people with different experiences might have better solutions to those provided by the author in the article.