Brittany Beveridge

Kari Benguria

CIS 111-008

1/22/17

Ted Talk Speech Analysis

Joe Sabia in his Ted Talk, The Technology of storytelling uses the rhetorical triangle

to explain the history of storytelling. The first part of the triangle he uses is Logos: a tactic of

appealing by logical reasoning. In his speech he explains that for more than four hundred

years, storytelling was only told by book. Until one day a man name Lothar Meggendorfer

created the first pop-up book. After his creation, the way of storytelling would never be the

same again. Sabia then began to tell the audience the history of storytelling. Sabia also used

pictures in his speech that represented the use of logos. He used this picture of Lothar

Meggendorfer when explaining his creation.

Figure 1. Allegro, Corrie. (2013, August). The Allegro Moveable Book Collection. Retrieved from

http://allegrobookcollection.typepad.com/allegrobookcollection/articles.html#top.

He also had pictures of all the different types of ways stories were told throughout the years.

He explained how technology is now our way of storytelling by us simply tweeting about our
daily lives. His use of logos was very effective in his speech because it was mainly the

foundation of his argument. The second strategy he used was Pathos: appealing to the

audience by beliefs and emotions. He showed pathos in his speech by using humor to make

the audience laugh on occasions his speech. Sabia did a very poor job incorporating pathos

into his speech. It did not help his argument at all and definitely did not persuade me. The

third and final strategy Sabia used was Ethos: showing authority and fairness. Sabia showed a

little bit of credibility throughout his speech when he used pictures to demonstrate the history

of storytelling. It made his speech stronger and more reliable. Sabia could have done a much

better job using ethos in his speech. He did build enough credibility for himself to present an

effective argument. He mostly relied on logos to get him through his speech.

Although Sabias speech was interesting, it lacked many components. The attention

getter and ending was by far the best part of his speech. He caught the audiences attention by

beginning as if he was going to tell a bed time story and ending it the same way. The middle

of the speech needs a lot of improvement. The way he presented his background visual aids

was very disorganized and distracting. He used his IPad throughout the speech in a very un-

useful way. He did not have a power point but instead kept going from one app to another to

show different pictures and points. His speech was very short and at a fast pace so you could

not understand the point he was trying to make. He did not explain very well the history of

storytelling. He jumped from one creation to the next without showing the importance

technological history had on storytelling. Sabia needs to improve on connecting with the

audience. This is where he needs to improve on the use of pathos. Due to the lack of pathos,

the audience was unable to feel connected to the speech. It was very hard to stay engaged in

his speech because he did not use creativeness in his presentation and lacked to engage the
 audience. The use nonverbal communication was not present because he strictly stood there

speaking with his IPad in his hand. His use of the IPad also contributed to the lack of

engagement. If he used a power point instead I believe he could of interacted more with the

audience to make they feel a part of the story he was trying to tell. Also his use of ethos was

very weak. As a speaker, he should have shown more credibility so the audience could have

been persuaded. Overall Sabias speech needs a lot of corrections to be more effective in

persuading the audience to believe technology is the new way of storytelling.

Reference

Sabia, Joe. (2011, May). The technology of storytelling. Retrieved January 22, 2017, from

https://www.ted.com/talks/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling#t-208001