Regarded as one of the top twenty-five Hispanics in America according to Time Magazine in 2005, George Lopez found success as an actor and a stand-up comedian, best known for his TV sitcom called “The George Lopez Show” in 2002-2007.  As I was growing up during the last decade, I was a fan of “The George Lopez Show”.  It was particularly the show that I always looked forward to watching during my childhood days.  There is one stand-up comedy show of George Lopez called “Spanglish”   Here the Rhetor, in this case George Lopez, touches on the perspective of how white people look at the Mexican-Americans today and criticize them for not knowing any English when in fact English is certainly not the official language of the United States.  He also reflects on how they criticize them for being lazy and depleting the system.  Furthermore I believe that the video coincides with the criteria that Keith Grant Davie presents in his “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” article.  The criterion to a rhetorical analysis requires analyzing the type of text it is, analyzing the exigencies as well as the author and the intended audience.  Those are the constituents of a rhetorical situation.

            This video is a visual text.  Lopez tries to persuade the audience to believe that everywhere that whites are, Latinos were there first. (Lopez, 2008)  And he uses a very rather grotesque example to do so.  Lopez uses logos when he presents this example.  He presents the idea that when people talk smack about Latinos, everything gets down to the fields.  Taco Bell has some tattered green onions.  Eating too much of these can cause the human being to get E Coli.  Who picked and sent the onions to Taco Bell?  Latinos.  Disgusting way of putting it but that’s the reasoning George presents to his audience.  He provides everyone with a reason to not talk smack about Hispanics and Latinos because in the end, they will win.

          Here we go on to analyze the second criteria of a rhetorical situation and that is reader or audience.  I believe Lopez has a special audience as well as another audience.  He has a connection with his audience in the form that he speaks to them intentionally in Spanglish and then in other circumstances he sticks to English so other non-native Spanish speakers may understand what he is talking about.  He speaks directly to the Mexican-American community and then code switches to English.  This video has an intended audience:  the people who are there to watch him and the other for non-Hispanic people so that they can understand to appreciate Hispanics a little more, not to make them believe they are better but simply not to think of them as lazy people who are depleting the system.  His argument in this case is un-emotional.  He does not use pathos.  He does not want the audience to feel sympathetic towards Latinos.  In fact it’s the other way around.

          George Lopez is one of my all-time favorite personas.  He represents how Latinos interact.  It’s really amazing how he can represent the Latino family in such ways.  He’s a humble man.  Here we are analyzing the author of the presented discourse.  George Lopez, born April 23, 1961, did not pursue a college education and it is not like it would have been easy for him to do so.  Graduating from San Fernando High School in 1979, Lopez did not attend college because of financial circumstances.    With that being said, I still consider George Lopez to be highly intelligent because he has been a comedian ever since he graduated from high school starting at the bottom with radio shows in Los Angeles, CA up until today where he is still highly successful at the age of fifty-three.  He uses satire in many of his stand-ups and he uses his childhood life as the basis of his comedy.  The tough life of being raised in a Mexican family.  That could be what he uses as his motivation to keep doing these stand-ups.  I believe Lopez has made a name for himself here in the U.S and that is why he can go on to say stuff like this and people will believe what he is saying.  This is where he uses Ethos.  It is his credibility.  A lot of people like George Lopez and respect him for what he’s done in his life.  He establishes himself as an expert in the Latino community.

          That leaves only two more step to a rhetorical analysis and those are analyzing the constraints and the exigencies of the presented discourse.  Lopez is responding to people who are racist and are always criticizing the Chicano community and denounce them for not speaking English.  “You could vote English the official language but it’ll never work because we’re always going to speak Spanglish.  It’s too late!  That’s all we’ve talked in our house for years” (Lopez, 2008).  Lopez presents the need to establish his idea that Hispanics were in fact here first and voting English as the official United States language would never work because Hispanics are the leading ethnic minority in the U.S.  This is essentially what Lopez is trying to accomplish.  The need to expand the knowledge that English will not be voted the official language any time soon.  He has had sold out shows all over the U.S and many of his fans are people from different cultures.  For that matter there could be a cultural constraint here because it could influence the audience’s response.  And it’s true, most people here in the Chicano community are often talking Spanglish.  I hear it from different people every day, all the time here at UTEP.

            After considering all the elements that make up a rhetorical situation I decided that the author George Lopez is effective in trying to persuade the audience to believe that English is certainly not the official language of the U.S and certainly will not be anytime soon.  He tries to emphasize that Latinos are the ever-growing leading minority.  He relies strongly on logos and ethos but does not demonstrate any sign of using pathos.  Lopez I think, is successful in obtaining his overall goal.

           

References

 

Lopez, G. (2008, September). Spanglish. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z13CVD0idrM

 

Lopez. G. (2014).  George Lopez Biography. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/george-lopez-189160

 

Wells, M. (2011). Codeswitching in the comedy of George Lopez. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies, Vol. 5, 65-76. Retrieved from apples.jyu.fi/ArticleFile/download/161