Rhetorical Analysis Of Connie Parkinson's Represent Speech

In Connie Parkinson’s retirement speech, she takes advantage of her last moment as a teacher to warn us that we are losing our interpersonal connections. The culprit being cell phones. Through a laid-back style of speaking, Parkinson implores readers to acknowledge the harmful effects that come along with cell phone use. Passionate about her cause, Parkinson uses three different rhetorical devices to help get her message across: parallelism, syntax, and rhetorical questions. Examples of parallelism can be seen in a couple of different places. As she describes the changes she has witnessed throughout her forty years of teaching, she repeats the same structure: “From...to...” By doing this, she demonstrates how all the changes thus far have been the same-temporary. However, she specifically separates one item from the list that has not changed-cell phones. This example of parallelism is what introduces her main topic, and draws attention to the idea that the issue of cell phones is not something to be merely glossed over. Also used in the seventh paragraph, Parkinson lists cell phones among other items deemed as necessities, further relaying the idea that cell phones are

Short, concise sentences are found throughout the speech in nearly every paragraph. Her main purpose of using this sentence structure is to clearly state her points to the reader with a definite tone. An example of this can be found in the third paragraph where she builds up to the reveal of the problem: “It’s cell phones.” This bold statement conveys to readers that cell phones, and cell phones alone, are a huge issue that needs to be dealt with. Additionally, a second example can be seen in the sixth paragraph where the author simply states, “I fear that they [cell phones] are.” This abrupt sentence elicits a sense of urgency in readers, causing them to view the author’s argument with