Jim Valvano and TED Talks

When looking at the different speeches used so far this semester, some have points that were highly effective in connecting with the audience, while other came up short.  Although each speech has some element of logos, ethos or pathos in it, not all speeches used each to its full potential. 

The speech I found to be most influential and that truly resonated with me was Jim Valvano’s 1993 ESPY speech.   I may be a little biased since this happens to be one of my favorite speeches of all time, but there has to be a reason for that.  Valvano was able to move his audience with his passion and genuine belief in everything he was saying.  Pathos and ethos played the largest roles in his speech.  Valvano’s standing as a legendary basketball coach gave him great credibility with his audience, especially the sports fans, and they could respect him for all his accomplishments.  However, on a more serious note, Valvano’s fight with cancer added sympathy to the message Valvano was conveying about taking advantage of all that is offered to you in life.  Jim was also able to throw in some statistics about the prevalence of cancer in society and how it had the potential to affect, either directly or indirectly, someone in the audience. 

The speech I found to be least effective was the TED Talk about the history of the Earth.  Although I didn’t find the subject too fascinating prior to listening to the speech for eighteen minutes, the speaker was hardly able to connect with me or draw me in.  Logos dominated the speech with facts upon facts about the history of the Earth as well as our role in it.  Although some pathos was brought in with the discussion of knowledge and how the speaker wanted his grandson to continue learning at a high level, it was such a short part of the speech it didn’t seem to make a difference.  Ethos wasn’t even mentioned, but the viewer could infer based on the subject matter of the speech and the fact that the speaker was on TED Talks, he has to have a great knowledge of the topic.  Either way, it still didn’t connect with me.