Rhetorical Analysis

Greta Thunberg Global Warming

“People are suffering, people are dying, entire Ecosystems are collapsing” fear appeal

Greta Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations Climate Action summit was a very shocking thing to hear. This was a pivotal moment in her career. She started off as an internet sensation, a young girl skipping class every Friday to protest climate change then all of a sudden she is meeting with leaders of the world. At this meeting we find out she’s not just doing it for fun but that she actually has a passion for activism and that she is worth listening to. In this summit, we see a young girl nearly in tears because of the atrocities of the world. Greta uses people’s perception of her being a child, full of potential, naive, precious, and pure, to shock viewers at how scary the world is because of climate change. 

Greta expertly uses pathos, an appeal to ethics, by shaming the greedy rich for their actions and by blaming them for tearing down the planet and its people. The logos, appeal to logic, of Greta Thunberg’s speech, is that rich people are doing whatever they can to get even richer and by doing so they are killing people and causing climate change. Greta’s pathos has largely been discussed but to summarize, Greta is a very young girl in a big scary world and she uses that to her advantage in her speeches. This very much so was an excellently effective use of rhetoric. This speech, specifically the chosen line, turned Greta Thunberg from a meme into a household name. I am not even on Twitter but I saw countless tweets of her saying “entire ecosystems are collapsing” for literal months. Her career as a political activist completely exploded, and she now has access to much more resources that can spread her message so climate change can actually be worked on instead of ignored. The only way I would tweak it is by adding one or two laughable or at least usable moments for Twitter. When there’s only a single three-second clip that is somewhat laughable maybe some people will want to see the source, but when there’s a second or a third three-second clip, a lot more people are going to question whether or not they should watch the video because it is just so hilarious. Obviously, Greta and her writers were not writing a comedy special but I believe it’s all about who hears the message as long as the core of the message stays the same.

“Yes, please do enlighten me. Email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com” humor appeal

As far as social movements go, this one is quite unorthodox. Fast forward a few years, and Greta is huge. Andrew Tate is also huge, but not in a good way. He is very purposely controversial, often times he says things that belittle women, mainly slut-shaming. He also loves to show off how much money he has and makes. This consumerist “alpha-male”, thematically, goes perfectly against Greta. He is all about big spending, cigars, and fast cars. She traveled by boat instead of air to show people that they can cut down their carbon footprint. Andrew Tate attempted to show off how much of a “top dog” he is by listing all the expensive things he owns. Greta replied by telling him he is insecure, and that his wealth is a shield to protect him from what people really think about his dog water, meaning horrible, takes. Greta is literally a teenager, she would not even blink if her car had an 8-gallon quad turbo instead of an 8-Liter, whatever that even is. Andrew Tate’s attempt to call Greta a loser for not being a rich asshole proved that he, as a speaker, does not understand who his audience is. Greta, as the speaker, understood her audience, Andrew Tate’s antis(which is pretty much everyone), when she called out Andrew Tate for trying to inflate himself. 

Dissecting Greta’s tweet using Cicero’s five cannons is very interesting. Her tweet starts off pretending to be interested in what he has to say, then she returns his insult and calls him an even bigger loser for believing that living so monetarily is worth it. Her style is that of a teenager, a true member of Gen-Z. Tiktok once went through an era called the fairy comments. To make a fairy comment first you put some sparkly, nature, and fairy emojis. Inside these emojis, you say a backhanded compliment that is more like an insult. An example message could be “words can’t describe you… but numbers can 1/10” or “you go girl, now don’t come back”. As readers can tell, these comments are very fun and light in a Gen Z way. Greta perfectly captures the Gen Z humor in her tweet with a little essence of the tiktok fairy comments. Everyone always remembers big celebrity beef, especially ones where bad people are just completely humiliated. This sticks with readers because Andrew Tate is a very big macho man, some would call him the face of modern misogyny, and Greta belittled him in a way that the entire internet laughed at. Her delivery was also done very well, a little cherry on top. His attack was a tweet so she retweeted. Her not turning to a news outlet or a magazine and instead to just write that little tweet and send it shows a sense a calmness as he tries to intimidate her and how casual shes being, like this is just another day for her.