Baoling Mei

Professor Justine C. Matias

Freshman Composition ENGL 11000

20 October 2021

Cover Letter

Everyone hopes that their life will be smooth sailing, but is this kind of life really perfect? On the long road of life, we cannot choose between adversity and prosperity, but we can choose different attitudes to face adversity. How people grow up depends largely on the needs of the environment. When all people’s needs and environment can be met, they will lose their motivation to move forward, their attention will diverge, and their spirits will relax. So when we encounter adversity, as long as we face it positively, it will make us stronger and stronger.

As Safwat Saleem’s speech video “Why I Keep Speaking Up Even When People Mock My Accent” in TED tells, he used many personal life examples in the video, shared with everyone with his own experience, and told how he was How to grow up in adversity. Even if we face many doubts and denials, we must improve ourselves from these doubts, make us stronger, and better build ourselves into hardworking people. Although the author encountered setbacks, he did not give up, but slowly changed and countered those bad voices. At the same time, express your thoughts through TED. The original intention of TED was also to convey ideas worth spreading.

After watching Safwat Saleem’s speech, I have a deep feeling. In the video, SafwatSaleem uses vivid language and multimedia to express his experience, which also allows me to fully appreciate the purpose of the theme he wants to express. And this also made me think that I had faced the same problem, but I did not fight back as bravely as the author, and did not make any changes. I just believe that time will get better. But after I watched this video, I felt his positive attitude towards life. As people grow up, they learn both the right things and the wrong things. To polish away the wrong things, good times cannot be done, only adversity can polish away the by-products of learning. Also, the content of the video taught me not to feel free to judge/define others when I don’t know what they have been through. By the end of the video, it taught me engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.

Growing up in adversity

Safwat Saleem is a Pakistani-American Visual artist, graphic designer, and filmmaker. The video “Why I Keep Speaking Up Even When People Mock My Accent” is created by Artist Safwat Saleem. The speech was posted on TED in July 2016 and has now become a video Answer to people’s questions about prejudice or accent. Despite growing up with a stutter, Saleem decided to do his own voice-over. Because he is an independent animator, he wants to give life to his characters. In his videos, he used this form of speech to use satire and art to reveal some stories in adversity. This is believed that Safwat Saleem’s hypothesis of sound and the voice of the Characters voiced various stupid characters such as bears, sheep, greeting cards, and Whales in his films. Therefore, he has created a strong spiritual temperament that has maintained Its inspiring power over the years. Through this way of communication, It gave a better understanding to many viewers who were new to this area and had questions. The main content of the argument of the whole video is that we need to grow in adversity. No matter what setbacks we encounter, we can use the spiritual power in adversity to hone ourselves and face adversity with a positive and calm attitude, as long as our hearts are full Brightness, every hardening of painful adversity will make our hearts stronger.

Safwat Saleem’s speech was full of irony and art from beginning to end, revealing the language of adversity. Even before the famous voice-over for each character in the speech, Safwat Saleem’s language has always had an emphatic tone. Bringing a deeper understanding to the audience, the video reveals that the audience can better enter into this life of adversity. Thus, it is a unique way to capture the audience’s attention and speak about the hearts of people in difficult situations. He took the examples and experiences of his own life, “because of been influenced by bad comments”, “because of his accent and stuttering problems being ignored, and he dare not get along with others boldly”. From the video: ” And I hated introducing myself, especially in groups. I’d always stutter on my name, and there was usually someone who’d go, “Have you forgotten your name?” And then everybody would laugh. That joke never got old (3 min 50s). ” The author introduces the central idea of the whole video through his own experience in school and sharing his fears at the time.This is also the point he wants to emphasize. It shows that he was made fun of by people because of his stuttering problem when he was growing up. I feel troubled in my life and dare not communicate with others. These kinds of problems are combined together, using multimedia methods to combine the experience of expressing the story, so that the audience can talk about this topic more interestingly, without making people feel uncomfortable.

The author presents different stories in the form of speeches and uses vivid language to express the themes he wants to tell. “They were mostly reacting to my accent, that it is not normal for a narrator to have an accent. But what is normal, anyway? We know that reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you’re black. We know that professors are less likely to help female or minority students. And we know that resumes with white-sounding names get more callbacks than resumes with black-sounding names (7 min 15s). ” There is no specific so-called normal state. People think that it is normal only because of the stereotype formed by people’s cognition of common sense. Therefore, once they have beyond the scope of common sense, they will be regarded as abnormal. Thereupon he wants to convey to the public that there are ever-changing situations in this world. Although not everyone will accept everyone’s flaws and imperfections, we must face and overcome difficulties bravely. We must learn to be ourselves and not be defined by others. Just as the author grew up stuttering, this does not prevent him from becoming an artist. When he made up his mind to be his own voice-over, he had already learned to challenge himself. The author also hopes that through this kind of speech, more people can hear their thoughts, and at the same time, people with the same difficulties can help themselves not to feel inferior. Through their own real examples, let those who dare not face themselves, fear their accents and shortcomings, accept their own shortcomings and bravely face and improve themselves at the same time. He wanted to appeal to everyone not to give up being themselves just because of others’ comments on them.

Looking back at the purpose Safwat Saleem wanted to express, through the TED Talk to share their stories, spread more relevant content to reassure people to be brave and be themselves, while also potentially satirizing those who discriminate against people with disabilities. His topics and evidence made his words more convincing. Although the final audience was not affected by this, the purpose of his speech has been achieved. Therefore, Safwat Saleem’s rhetorical power not only comes from his sadness of the influence of people’s comments on others, but also from his voice spirit of emphasizing and interesting retelling stories when expressing this vision. In his TED expression, this type allows the audience to have a deeper understanding of the controversial dialogue. Because of his stuttering defect, the author is afraid to communicate with others, and whenever someone communicates with him, he will be so flustered that he can’t speak. So when he started his voice dubbing work, when he was praised, he felt the meaning of his voice dubbing. But when he saw those bad messages, he began to feel uncomfortable. As mentioned in the video: “When I saw those comments for the first time, all I saw were bad, but they didn’t know that I cared so much about my voice.” (6min 37s) The author uses his own experience to strengthen the theme he wanted to express and played some past audio to show his voice role. When the author has described his inner thoughts after watching the comments, he has left a foreshadowing for the correspondence he needs to make later. Only by improving yourself through outside voices and making yourself stronger can you better fight against the bad evaluations of the outside world. So the author insisted on doing his own dubbing work, and by dubbing animation, he gained more confidence while also allowing the audience to understand more about this experience.

Review the full text of this analysis, it can be clearly seen that Safwat Saleem’srhetoric effectiveness has been conveyed to his audience, and his ideas are conveyed to the audience interestingly through contemporary artistic multimedia forms. The author uses examples in life to summon the common feelings of the public and touch the hearts of the public. The process doesn’t feel boring, and it won’t make them disgusted. And the realization of these kinds of ideas will bring the content he wants to convey, affect the public, and make the public have different views. It not only ensures the validity of his speech at the moment, but also ensures that these speeches continue to be continued today. Even if someone still doubts and disagrees with this, we cannot deny that his words do affect some people now, and he is also guiding us not to prejudice and over-comment others, not to over-define ourselves and demand others in your life. Be good at complimenting others, and should not be treated differently just because some people are different from the public.