Garcia-Maynard 1

Ashley Garcia-Maynard
ENC 3331
20 February 2016
IDignity Rhetorical Analysis
Orlando has a large number of homeless people who roam the streets with no access to
food, water or shelter. Because of the status of their predicament, homeless people have no forms
of identification that can lead them to get any financial help and to begin the climb out of
poverty. This sets them back quite a bit. Luckily, IDignity was created in Central Florida with the
mission of helping the homeless and those who are of low-income to be given the necessary
identification materials to continue to better the lives of them and their families.
The piece of discourse I chose from their site was the IDignity Work-Along video. In
this video, Mayor Buddy Dyer, Chief of Police Paul Rooney and Fire Department Chief John
Miller are seen devoting their time to helping local citizens recover their personal information
and get back on track with their lives. They are the rhetors in this rhetorical situation who are
able to positively influence their target audiences to action in the form of donating time and
money to the cause, as well as spreading the word and creating awareness of the cause. The
exigence in this case is that fact that there are thousands of people in Orlando and the
surrounding areas who lack the proper identification needed to have access to help and benefits.
Without steps taken toward solving this crisis, it will only worsen over time and the lives and
safety of many people residing in Orlando will be at stake if they are not able to access the help
they need, for which they will need some forms of identification.

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According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel (Santich, 2015), in the 2014-2015 school
year 6,700 public school students were reported to be homeless because of their parents
situation. This is a major problem as homelessness can disrupt a students success in school and
mentally and physically harm the student as well. In the video, Chief Rooney states that his
department is fully on board with the cause, especially because they spend so much of their
resources on trying to identify people and that the program could help them to take steps toward
closing the information gap (IDignity, 2016). Also in the video, Mayor Dyer tells viewers about
how he talked to a man who said he needed identification to continue with his plan of getting
higher education. He makes it a point that citizens without identification are not able to move
forward with their lives, which is why hes so dedicated to helping his fellow citizens.
Additionally, Fire Chief Miller points out that the fire department also supports the cause,
especially because they witness homelessness and poverty every day and how greatly if affects
people in those situations. These are response can be considered fitting responses to the situation
at hand as the viewers (the rhetorical audience) of this video, which are citizens of Orlando that
could help to donate to the cause or volunteer some of their time for it, will see that steps are
being taken to combat these issues and that fact could convince them to join in, especially
because community leaders are involved with the project. This is, in fact, the main constraint
because this non-profit runs on donations and volunteer hours. Without both of these, it would be
very difficult to continue on with its cause. City leaders recognize the serious problem and its
only getting worse over time. If this program becomes very successful, it could mean a huge
reduction of homeless people in Central Florida, which would solve one of the several that
plague Central Florida currently, and leaves more time to focus on other issues, such as human
trafficking.

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It is clear from the video that all the community leaders are trying to show their sympathy
and support for the cause. As mentioned in chapter 7, its imperative that a rhetor comes across
as honest and displaying goodwill (Palczewski, Ice, Fritch 154) when speaking to his target
audience. They speak in a calm tone and use non-alarming terms, while still informing audiences
on the negative effects of not having proper identification. They talk about how serious the
problem of a lack of identity is and how big the problem is in Orlando, which is home to a large
number of homeless people. They want to create a sense of urgency and prompt their audience to
action, without causing panic or fear or otherwise overwhelming their audience. This helps
audiences who are not currently and or have never found themselves in these circumstances to be
able to identify more closely with the cause. In addition, these leaders tend to be perceived in a
specific way from the publics point of view, such as leaders who care about their community
and want to give back, so its important that these leaders maintain their rhetorical persona
(Palczewski, Ice, Fritch 150) when addressing audiences.
The audience to be addressed here are residents of the Orlando area. The audience
targeted is a fairly diverse group consisting of adults mostly from the middle and upper classes.
These people are those who are doing financially well and arent quite aware of the seriousness
that homelessness is in Orlando and the rest of Central Florida. They probably dont understand
why these people cant climb out of homelessness and get a job like everyone else does.
Theyll need to be taught that many of these people are without identification, and that without
identification, getting help, a job, or simply even enrolling their children in public school is
nearly impossible. The IDignity campaign video with community leaders will explain to the
audience the state of the situation and whats being done to fix it, as well as what they can do to

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help by inputting a call-to-action in their videos and other pieces of discourse they put out to the
public.

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Works Cited
Palczewski, Catherine H. , Ice, Richard, Fritch, John. "Rhetors." Palczewski, Ice, Fritch.
Rhetoric in Civic Life. State College: Strata Publishing, 2012. Print.
IDignity. IDignity Video Gallery. 13 February 2016. <http://www.idignity.org/video-gallery>.
Santich, Kate. Orlando Sentinel. 20 March 2015. Online. 13 February 2016.