Isaiah

Blink

One of the best ways to get a message across to a specific audience is by doing that through a rhetoric piece. The three main elements of rhetoric literature provides the reader with a message, communicator, and audience. The author wants the audience to gain more knowledge towards a certain situation as well as change the state of the audience when introducing the new information. The perfect example of a literature artwork that possesses these elements would be Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It is a book that tells the reader the process of decision making and instincts. Blink provides a reader with examples of logos, pathos and other literary devices. This book provides the reader with an effective rhetoric message.

So, throughout the book there are numerous of psychological tests that are the authors way of proving that short glimpses of things can tell a lot about a person or situation. The author is providing the element of logos through the experiments in the different studies. There is a psychologist named John Gottman who goes through various tests where he studies peoples behaviors. He gains knowledge of the people by observing them having a conversation for a few minutes, As they talk John is observing for facial expressions, body language, and gestures. John is so accurate with his analysis that “if he analyzes an hour (of a married couple talking), he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. If he watches a couple for fifteen minutes, his success rate is around 90 percent” (Gladwell 10).  John is able to prove through careful examinations that he accurately can be able to predict things based upon observations in a short amount of time, and that he can just as well as when he takes more time to observe and think. In a way the author is providing the audience with a logos and ethos appeal. Malcolm uses logical reasons along with using experts to back up the reasons why the results ended up the way they did to give the reader assurance of the new data. Some could argue that the average person would never be able to read someones body language so accurately and be able to judge a person just from that. That would be a false assumption though. According to psychologist Nalini Ambady who gave students a video clip of teachers to judge how good of a teacher they were, “A person watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher he or she has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who has sat in the teacher’s class for an entire semester” (7). Body language can be picked up by anyone if they pay attention to all the movements and signs. A persons body language is very informational and tells people a lot about a person. Malcolm effectively makes sure to give the reader perfect examples to assure the facts.

Also, there is evidence that people do not always make the right decision when evaluating something quickly. Gladwell brings up an example of the election of 1914 for the U.S. Senate which was a terrible election. A candidate named Warren Hardening, “at the time (was) about 35 years old. His head, features, shoulders and torso had a size that attracted attention; their proportions to each other made an effect which in any male at any place would justify more than the term handsome” (27). Everyone looked at his physical appearance and thought he was the perfect Senate without truly seeing if he was obligated to be a senator.  People would describe him as, “vague and ambivalent on matters of policy. His speeches were once described as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.”” (27). There is more than a person's physical appearance that should influence peoples votes. The most beauty people in the world are not always built to be leaders. Intelligence, leadership, and heart are not something that is always visible. Some could say that confidence is something that has to be visible in order to be a leader, but there is a thin line between confidence and cockiness. The main concept I feel like Malcolm wants the reader to grasp is to research things do not just believe everything you see.

Finally, I think Malcolm did a excellent job of using rhetoric effectively. He made sure to not only give us facts, but he provided a reliable source to back up the facts. I think after reading this book that I will start to notice things more often than I normally would not have. I’m gonna be a little more aware of certain expressions and body language.