In his essay entitled “How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad” Stephen H. Webb, a professor of religion and psychology, uses an extremely ironic tone to make the argument that soccer is destroying America, when in actuality he believes quite the opposite. Throughout the essay Webb makes many ridiculous and unsupported claims regarding soccer and its downfalls, it isn’t until the final paragraph, when he reveals soccer’s favorable impact on his own family, that his true positive feelings towards soccer emerge. Under the pretense of being a supporter of one opinion he successfully tears down his own “team’s” arguments and promotes those of the opposing group, the group of which he actually sides with. He uses tone and language to further support his true opinion; Through the use of sarcasm and offensive claims he creates a speaker that much of the audience will find easily dislikable; thus diminishing not only his ethos but also the credibility of what he is saying. Through these techniques he demonstrates his impressive rhetorical abilities, and in many cases makes the reader subconsciously agree with what he is truly arguing.
Webb is very aware of who is audience is composed of and how to offend them to the point of losing their support. A disdainful tone towards women can be observed in the following statement, “soccer is a game for girls…. The margins for victory are almost always to narrow afford any gloating.” (Paragraph 8). Webb seems to be trying to offend the women of his audience through this blatant insult; this attempt is very successful and quite possibly completely drains his ethos in the eyes of most women in a matter of sentences. This causes him to lose the support of a huge portion of his potential audience, he goes continues to whittle down his supporters until there are little to none left. His allusions to the Bible, Jesus, and God have the effect of alienating those who are not familiar with or who do not believe in Christianity, further diminishing his audience. Webb puts forth a faux speaker who seemingly comes across as ignorant not only in who he is offending through his ill thought out comments but also with his absurd claims that lack evidence.
This essay includes many laughable claims that are severely lacking supporting evidence; Webb seems to pair the exaggerated claims with little to no evidence in order to poke holes in the argument that soccer is having a negative impact on America. One prime of the examples of these claims is when he says, “Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it” (paragraph 4) in this quote he is saying the basic fundamentals of soccer are flawed, and that using your only your feet in a horrible offense. This claim is absolutely absurd, he supports his claim with faulty evidence such as seemingly inapplicable references from the bible, an allusion to an event in which a man threw a shoe at George W. Bush, as well as describing feet as unevolved and primal appendages. He argues that hands are superior to feet and that they are divine gifts from God, while it is true that hands are important to many human activities he neglects to mention the fact that most human activities are dependent upon the use of feet. Humans can’t walk, or play any of the other sports that he argues are superior to soccer without feet. The omission of applicable and relevant evidence in many of his statements seems to discredit nearly everything he is saying, causing many readers to agree with the opposing opinion in this situation, which is his goal.
Arguably one of the most powerful uses of Webb’s rhetorical savvy can be observed in the first 9 paragraphs, when he takes on the role of the expressing the opinion that opposes his own. He takes extreme versions of actual arguments made by those who oppose soccer and states them in an outlandish manner for example, “Everyone knows soccer is a foreign invasion….. soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair” ( paragraph 7) many of those who criticize soccer dislike its European lineage. While Webb is in theory supporting this thought by stating it in his essay, but he is actually pointing out the total absurdity of the comment, and through this he leads the reader to the conclusion that the data backing up the claim that soccer is ruining America is extremely faulty and therefore supporting the opposing side, that believe in the benefits of soccer, is the logical choice. In the final paragraph when he reveals how much he enjoys soccer and what it does for his family it causes the reader to reexamine what they just read and after closer inspection the true mastery of his argument can be unearthed.
Throughout this essay Webb utilizes a huge array of rhetorical devices to make his argument. It can be inferred that because of his understanding of the human mind, due to his education in psychology, he knew exactly how to work his audience to get them to subconsciously come to the conclusion he desired them to. He seemingly used reverse psychology to argue one side and ‘try’ to get people to support it, when in reality he wanted them to support just the opposite, which tended to be the result. Through his expert use and understanding of psychology, ethos, logos, and hyperbole Webb demonstrated his incredible rhetorical and argumentative skills in the composition of this essay.
Webb is very aware of who is audience is composed of and how to offend them to the point of losing their support. A disdainful tone towards women can be observed in the following statement, “soccer is a game for girls…. The margins for victory are almost always to narrow afford any gloating.” (Paragraph 8). Webb seems to be trying to offend the women of his audience through this blatant insult; this attempt is very successful and quite possibly completely drains his ethos in the eyes of most women in a matter of sentences. This causes him to lose the support of a huge portion of his potential audience, he goes continues to whittle down his supporters until there are little to none left. His allusions to the Bible, Jesus, and God have the effect of alienating those who are not familiar with or who do not believe in Christianity, further diminishing his audience. Webb puts forth a faux speaker who seemingly comes across as ignorant not only in who he is offending through his ill thought out comments but also with his absurd claims that lack evidence.
This essay includes many laughable claims that are severely lacking supporting evidence; Webb seems to pair the exaggerated claims with little to no evidence in order to poke holes in the argument that soccer is having a negative impact on America. One prime of the examples of these claims is when he says, “Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it” (paragraph 4) in this quote he is saying the basic fundamentals of soccer are flawed, and that using your only your feet in a horrible offense. This claim is absolutely absurd, he supports his claim with faulty evidence such as seemingly inapplicable references from the bible, an allusion to an event in which a man threw a shoe at George W. Bush, as well as describing feet as unevolved and primal appendages. He argues that hands are superior to feet and that they are divine gifts from God, while it is true that hands are important to many human activities he neglects to mention the fact that most human activities are dependent upon the use of feet. Humans can’t walk, or play any of the other sports that he argues are superior to soccer without feet. The omission of applicable and relevant evidence in many of his statements seems to discredit nearly everything he is saying, causing many readers to agree with the opposing opinion in this situation, which is his goal.
Arguably one of the most powerful uses of Webb’s rhetorical savvy can be observed in the first 9 paragraphs, when he takes on the role of the expressing the opinion that opposes his own. He takes extreme versions of actual arguments made by those who oppose soccer and states them in an outlandish manner for example, “Everyone knows soccer is a foreign invasion….. soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair” ( paragraph 7) many of those who criticize soccer dislike its European lineage. While Webb is in theory supporting this thought by stating it in his essay, but he is actually pointing out the total absurdity of the comment, and through this he leads the reader to the conclusion that the data backing up the claim that soccer is ruining America is extremely faulty and therefore supporting the opposing side, that believe in the benefits of soccer, is the logical choice. In the final paragraph when he reveals how much he enjoys soccer and what it does for his family it causes the reader to reexamine what they just read and after closer inspection the true mastery of his argument can be unearthed.
Throughout this essay Webb utilizes a huge array of rhetorical devices to make his argument. It can be inferred that because of his understanding of the human mind, due to his education in psychology, he knew exactly how to work his audience to get them to subconsciously come to the conclusion he desired them to. He seemingly used reverse psychology to argue one side and ‘try’ to get people to support it, when in reality he wanted them to support just the opposite, which tended to be the result. Through his expert use and understanding of psychology, ethos, logos, and hyperbole Webb demonstrated his incredible rhetorical and argumentative skills in the composition of this essay.