Reflection
Through this paper which anaylzed the song “Dr. Whoever” by Amine, I actually did learn something about active citizenship more so because of my artifact rather than the assignment. I learned that being some who is outspoken and open about one’s struggles, problems and feelings will help me personally and the community I am in because it’s important to talk about problems and the such so that you can properly overcome them and not drag people and yourself down by holding on to things and bottling up. It also reinforced the fact that being there for those close to you and helping them through hard times is something that makes you a better person and a better active citizen. In terms of what I learned rhetorical, rappers use a lot more rhetoric than I ever imagined they did. For example in this particular artifact the use of ethos logos and pathos were relevant throughout the whole song start to finish. More specifically to the song Amine used rhetorical tactics such as authenticity, coding and code words. He was authentic in talking about his own personal problems and venting to the audience to establish a commonplace and gain the audiences trust. The coding and code words were used to bring the audience closer to the author by means of familiarity through popular slang words and phrases. Overall, while analyzing my artifact I learned a lot about being an active citizen and learned that even rappers use rhetoric while farthing my understanding of specific important rhetorical tools.
Rhetorical Analysis
Rhetorical Analysis of “Dr. Whoever” by Amine
Have you ever had a problem in your life, major or minor, that you felt as if you just could not talk to anyone about so you just bottled it up and keep it to yourself? Whether it be out of embarrassment, self pride, not wanting to be seen as weak or even something as little as not wanting to annoy someone else; this seems to be a very common theme in the world today and is causing serious problems for today’s youth. As Ruiz states in her online article, new research suggests that more teens and young adults are dealing with emotional and mental health distress than ever before (2017). This problem has become especially pertinent among the younger generations, causing the aforementioned problems, because of the stigmas that have been placed around talking about your feelings and being vulnerable. These stigmas have young people caught up in the mindset that feelings should never be talked about and just dealt with themselves without outside help from others. These stigmas are even worse for the males of these younger generations because even having feelings, let alone talking about them, is stigmatized as being weak and feminine. This problem does not just affect everyday people it affects people from all different walks of life. One of which is Adam Daniel, better known to the general public as Amine.
Adam “Amine Daniel, who is better known to the general public as Amine, is a twenty-four year old American rapper/singer and songwriter. Amine the son of Ethiopian immigrants was born in April of 1994 and raised in Portland Oregon. Originally wanting to be a big time basketball player, the rapper began his rap career making diss tracks about rival high schools after getting cut from his high school basketball team his sophomore year. But his career did not talk off until a few years later when his Billboard 100 Top 10 hit Caroline dropped in 2016 and later dropping his first album Good for You, while his first mixtape, Odyssey to Me, was almost completely overlooked in 2014. Amine’s quick rise to stardom and adjustment to this new luxe life was and is not as glamorous as everyone presumed it to be. The stark difference between the presumed and reality hit me after listening to the intro song DR. WHOEVER from his newest album ONEPOINTFIVE which was released earlier this year.
Artifact Analysis
The song DR. WHOEVER is the intro song, which sets the mood and tone for the entire album, making it arguably one of the most important songs of the album. DR. WHOEVER delves into the aforementioned problem of the stigma placed on talking about your feelings and problems as a male of the younger generations. While you may think Amine’s problems might be unrelatable because of his fame and wealthy life but he talks about very common problems that almost everyone can relate to while also explaining his hardship adjusting to fame. Amine begins building his credibility with personal facts and an uncanny openness on personal issues and demons he is and/or has dealt with in his life that he feels like he has not been able to talk about openly due to this stigma. He lays his song out like a therapy session between a patient and a therapist and basically he vents and goes into explicit detail on all too familiar problems that most people face in their lives, while remaining very genuine. He also implements ethos, logos and pathos to build on this establish reliability to drive his argument in an effective and very logical way.
Method of Analysis
To better understand my artifact of choice,the song DR. WHOEVER by Amine, I will be using specific rhetorical tools of Aristotle’s Big Three ethos, pathos and logos throughout the analysis of the song. Ethos is defined as the argument by character (Heinrich, 2007). From this tool, the speaker builds their trustworthiness and credibility with the audience to establish themselves. Pathos is defined as the argument by emotion (Heinrich, 2007). When using pathos in an artifact it allows for a deeper emotional connection between speaker and audience. Logos is defined as an argument by logic (Heinrich, 2007). Logos uses logical tools like data, proven facts and reasoning to inform or persuade the audience. Using all three of these together I will be able to get a true sense of Amine’s purpose for writing and recording this song as these three together, according to Heinrich, make up the essence of effective persuasion (40).
Ethos Examination
Ethos as defined in Heinrichs’ text is the argument by character, which employs the speaker’s personality, reputation, and ability to be seen as trustworthy as viewed by the audience (40). Amine uses ethos throughout his song DR. WHOEVER but it is very much centralized to the opening verse. He begins building his trustworthiness and credibility in the first opening lines saying, “I sit here and tell you my problems, That’s how this work, right?” (Amine, 2018) basically setting the stage for him to open up to us like a client would to a therapist in a therapy session. The use of ethos continues when he goes into detail about the personal problems he’s been dealing with through the following verses of his song. For example he talks about problems his troubled love life, family issues and loneliness in very detailed and open verses. Digging deeper into the song, we see that Amine uses three specific ethos tools in his song; tactical flaw, dubitatio, authenticity.
The specific ethos tools we see be implemented by Amine are the tactical flaw, dubitatio, and authenticity. The tool tactical flaw is defined in Heinrichs’ text as, “revealing a weakness that wins sympathy or shows the sacrifice you have made for the cause” (2007). Amine uses the tactical flaw multiple times throughout his song , a specific example of such is in the opening verse he says, “Man, I’ve thought about suicide a thousand times But, I’d hate to disappoint and see my momma cry” (2018). He get sympathy from the audience by talking about how he’s thought about suicide but can not actually go through with it because he does not want to see his mom upset because of his actions. The next tool dubitatio is defined as not coming off as tricky; but instead seem to be in doubt about what to say (Heinrichs, 2007). We see this in the opening four lines where Amine talks about how he is supposed to go about this session, referring to the song which he is using as a therapy session between him and the listener, like he’s never done a therapy session before. When literally a few lines later he says, “My niggas having sessions and Im doing’ sessions,” implying that he has been doing therapy sessions when earlier he tried to come off doubtful as how to go about a therapy session. Lastly, he uses the ethos tool of authenticity which is defined as “making your audience think you’re being real, just by being your genuine loveable everyday self” (Heinrichs, 2007). As said above Amine does this by literally sticking to what he’s been doing. While being serious and talking about real issues he throws in the jovial sarcastically disrespectful side of himself that we’ve all come to know and love in the few years since his rise to stardom.
Pathos Inquisition
Pathos, according to Heinrichs, is the argument by emotion, which involves incorporating emotional appeals and the such into one’s argument (40). Amine uses pathos throughout the entire song beginning to end but the main usage is centralized to the body of the song, being the middle verses between the intro and outro. He begins invoking the listeners’ emotions early on in the song by starting off with the aforementioned suicide lines and then goes on a rant each verse about he problems he has been dealing with which feel all too familiar to the listener drawing them in with an emotional understanding of what he’s going through. Furthermore the specific pathos tools used by Amine are, nostalgia and emulation.
The specific pathos tools used by Amine in this song are as mentioned before, nostalgia and emulation. The tool of nostalgia is defined by Heinrichs as “promising a return to a perfect past,” (95) which is used to play on the sentimental longing for easier, happier times that have past that are common to both him and the audience. He invokes this feeling of nostalgia in the third verse of the song when he says, “ I miss when losing my virginity was my only worry Back when putting on a condom had me really scary And milkshakes were the only time we’d eat a cherry” (Amine, 2018). This evokes nostalgia because it brings us back to the simpler times of our preteen years were the only things we really had to worry about was losing our virginities and talking to girls compared to now in the adult world of having a job, supplying for our family and other real responsibilities. The tool of emulation is defined in Heinrichs’ text as providing the only kind of role model your audience already admires (94). Amine does this by remain his true self throughout such a serious song while talking about real issues that many people deal with in their lives. This provides them with the role model they already admire and adds to it by bringing in the more serious side of things that he has never really done before.
A Look into Logos
Logos is defined in Heinrichs’ text as an argument by logic and is not just about staying logical but also using the audience’s logic and incorporating it into your argument (39). The use of logos throughout the song is limited to just Amine’s logical flow and the wording he really chooses throughout the song. The song is laid out and presented in the only logical way that it should be presented by hitting key issues that happened in his life in the order that they happened from first to most recent. Amine focuses his use of logos on three specific tools; enthymeme, code grooming, and repeated code words.
Amine’s use of logos is almost limited to three specific logos tools. First, we have enthymeme which is defined in Heinrichs’ text as a logical sandwich that uses a choice to be made and makes it the result of a commonplace (148). For example Amine uses this when he says, “ Hey doc, do I tell ‘em how I actually feel? Or do I see a therapist and numb the pain with the pills” (2018). This is enthymeme because it uses the choice to take pills to numb his pains because of the commonplace of therapy sessions and the prescription of the therapist. The latter is a commonplace because it is a regular outcome in this day and age to leave a therapy session with a prescription of some sort to aid with emotional problems. Second the idea of code grooming is defined as, “using insider language to get an audience to identify with you and your idea” (Heinrichs, 2007). Amine does this throughout his song by using familiar terms and slang that his audience are used to and expect from him, words like “nigga, feelin’, ‘em, etc” (Amine, 2018) and also phrases like “ big mad, low low, Fashion Nova” (Amine, 2018). Lastly, he uses the logos tool of repeated code words which is defined as “finding specific commonplace terms that make a group bond and using them over and over again” (Heinrichs, 2007). Amine does this mainly with the word “nigga” which is used in slang as a word synonymous with bro, guy, brother and the likes. It is used by the younger generations in minority communities as a term of endearment as Amine uses it in the same way as well.
In conclusion, Amine’s song DR. WHOEVER is focused around breaking the stigma of talking about your feelings and the problems in life that you are struggling as a sign of weakness. As a rising star known for his diss rap and upbeat melodies and playfully disrespectful sense of humor, he has a massive stage in the eyes of today’s youth too really connect with the younger generation and break this stigma. HE does this using Aristotle’s BIg Three concepts of effective persuasion, those being ethos, logos and pathos. Not only does he use the general ideas of ethos logos and pathos; he delves deeper into each one and uses specific tools to really make this song an effective piece of rhetorical persuasion.
References
Amine (2018). “Dr. Whoever”. ONEPOINTFIVE [Audio file].
Heinrichs, J. (2017). Thank you for arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasion(3rd ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press.
Ruiz, R. (2017, May 03). Teens are increasingly struggling with their emotions — and talking about it online. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2017/05/03/teens-sharing-emotions-online/#4rBpydOjVOqL