Sunday with My Cousins

I went back to my aunt’s home every weekend. We have other three girls there—my aunt’s daughter Yvonne, and her husband’s children Jessica and Anna. I am familiar with Yvonne because we were hanging out since we were in China. Jessica and Anna are born in America and it was my second time to met them. We visited Yvonne’s apartment today. I am the oldest one so I am the driver—which means I cannot join their conversation during driving. This is a good chance to sit aside and find the rhetorical in what they was saying,

Jessica and Anna are always fighting with each other. It happens every day. Today, we decided to visit Yvonne’s apartment at 9:00am but we did not leave home until 11:00am. That was because Anna—the youngest one—was trying to wear Jessica’s dress. Jessica is only 2-years’ older than Anna so she never let herself lose in their “war”. Anna is a really good speaker and she was trying to attack her sister after she failed to get that dress. I found some Pathos in her words, like “I am so shame for that dress. It was so beautiful but when you are wearing that it was just ruined!” Jessica was angry. But she is not good at hurting someone by words so she just hit Anna. After all, I gave my dress to Anna then we finally left home at 11:00am.

We arrived at Yvonne’s apartment at 12:30. She just bought a lovely tent from IKEA. It’s for the little kids so it is very small. Here was the question: both Anna and Jessica wants to have their donuts in that tiny tent but only one person can get in that tent. Anna knew that her sister might hit her if she argues with her directly, so she came Yvonne—the owner of that tent. “ I have smaller size than Jessica and I promise I won’t make your tent messy. Besides, I am the youngest in our four girls and your tent was made for kids, I am the kid in your girls. Please please let me get inside of that cute tent! Oh and if you let me eat my donut there you do not need to buy me present for my birthday on Monday!!” Yvonne accepted her request. This time, Anna was using Ethos. What a smart talker she is!

I never notice that all people are using so much rhetoric in our daily commutation. In fact I found that people are using rhetoric every second. You need to find out which kind of rhetoric is better for your current situation and decide which one you would like to use: ethos, pathos or logos. By using correct rhetoric, you can get what you want easier. It’s really kind of language magic. I will pay more attention on that and practice more on using rhetoric in daily commutation.