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It Can Wait Rhetorical Analysis

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AT&T released a series of videos for their campaign titled “It Can Wait”. The telecommunications company have made multiple videos about distracted driving and the effects it can have on everyone. This essay will discuss the particular video titled “Close to Home”. This advert uses pathos to convince the target audience with the emotional message to not text and drive.
The video starts out by introducing a young boy, taking notice to every detail and riding his bicycle who will later witness an accident. It then goes on to introduce a young girl and her mother. The child is portrayed as sweet and innocent; playing with her toys and listening to her mother. The mother is portrayed as kind and loving; calling her daughter pet names and …show more content…
He is shown buying lottery tickets, implying he is hopeful, and getting into a truck with construction material in the back, implying he works in manual labor and is a hard worker. He then calls his wife to let her know he is going to his son’s baseball game, showing that he is a good man and a good father. This white heterosexual couple is the social norm and makes them very relatable to viewers.
The advertisement then briefly cuts back to the mom and daughter as the daughter makes an innocent, childlike request for ice cream. This can trigger maternal instincts to protect anything so young and pure. It then flashes back to the labor worker who consoles his wife’s work worries by sharing that he bought a lottery ticket. He is using sarcasm to cheer his wife up, further enforcing that he is a good man and eliciting sympathetic emotions from the …show more content…
This uses ethos by using AT&T, a cellular provider’s, approval to gain awareness of the cause. If AT&T says to wait to look at your phone, then the message is more likely to be taken seriously. It also use pathos by appealing to the emotional side of the audience. By introducing the victims and witnesses, the audience grows more of an attachment to them and feels more of a loss when they are hurt. This is an example of the videos use of pathos. Overall, the video uses visual aides and cultural context to portray relatable characters to get across their

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