Tedx Rhetorical Analysis

“A speech should not just be a sharing of information but a sharing of yourself” (Archbold, n.d.)
The above quotation really exemplifies the beauty of having thoughts spoken out in different ways to convey messages to benefit not only others, but ourselves. In the modern era, there are many platforms for us to share information and thoughts such as physical newspaper and magazines, online reading through websites and social media as the most popular medium. For the purpose of this essay, discussion will be thoroughly focused on the critical aspects of communication and presentation skills, and the platform of choice is TEDx. TEDx is a program hosted to spark interest in conversations to help individuals and group connects through sharing of
For Sir Ken Robinson, David Eagleman, and Tim Urban generally all three of them uses language that is simple, straight to the point and informative. Robinson whom is a professor of education, has a very natural accent but not too overpowering. As an educator himself, we could see how he composed his words in a manner as such he paced out his words so that the audience is always on par with his speech. Eagleman on the other hand, as a neurologist, he uses language that incorporates a lot of scientific terms. He gave simple definitions of the words which help the audience to gain better perspective of his topic relating to technology invention. Similarly, Urban as writer and a blogger, he uses a more up to date language or urban slangs as it is called, to suit a wider range of audience for him to make them feel relatable to his topic on procrastination. However, in contrast with Bailey, he uses very formal and a proper communicative language. The reason for formality is because he is doing a senior monitor’s speech for his graduation day. Hence it can be observed that the nature of event has an influenced on the language, attire and protocols of the
Humour is thought to be a very strong skill that should be mastered as one of the art in doing an impactful presentation. Having a good sense of humour will not only makes the presentation lively but also diminish some tense in the room. Consecutively, information sharing is easily transferred plus making the listeners felt more energetic and responsive to your talks. All four speakers managed to incorporate this skill but the most successful would be Robinson. I hardly hear any silence in the room as giggles are maintained throughout his talks which is never a dull situation. Moreover, in addition to humour, an effective communication should have a strong engagement session between the speaker and target audience. This is to ensure that the audience maintain their focus and able to receive information shared. Since TED talks are mostly a one-way communication where by audiences were not given a chance to ask questions or personally in contact with the speaker during talks, it is vital that the speaker maintains a good connection in the room. This can be made successful by using humour, slide projection and maintaining good eye contact with the audience. However, uniquely after David Eagleman’s talk, the emcee had asked few questions related to his invention which is a good representation of a simple two-way communication. It is believed that