Stephan H. Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy, wrote an essay about soccer and it's negative effect on the American culture; as he said in his essay "Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion...". The American culture is being broken down by the sport of soccer since it derives from other nations. Webb is an educated man that has high education in both philosophy, the fundamental study of knowledge and reality, and religion. Webb creates four data points to establish his claim he made that "Soccer is running America into the ground..." Mr. Webb is directing his essay towards those who are soccer enthusiasts, soccer players, and/or have some connection to soccer. The audience he chose was not to be negatively effected, he wrote to them in humor. He wrote to those who have a funny bone in their body and can realize the irony in his writing. A professor of religion and philosophy would not take serious time constructing a well written essay about how a singular sport was changing American in a negative direction.
Professor Webb does not take time to build up an ethos simply because it does not matter who writes this article since the article is meant to be taken lightly and with humor. However, the fact that he does teach religion creates an even more comical situation when he mentions God and religion: "Did Jesus wash his disciples' hands at the Last Supper? No hands are divine..." Webb uses Jesus and the last Supper as an example of how our hands are more important than our feet, which further attributes to his argument that sports played with their feet are nonsensical. Webb uses metaphors and similes a number of times throughout his essay as examples as to why feet, soccer, and everything that goes along with the sport of soccer is "Ruining America."
At the end of Webb's hysterical essay filled with hyperbole, simile, metaphor, and many other rhetorical devices he ends with an anecdote of his own life. Where he mentions that his three girls play on traveling soccer teams; the irony shows through in the very last sentence:"Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family." For a man who just spent his time writing about how terrible the game of soccer is and the pointlessness that it encourages, he ends by saying the game makes, not only himself, but his family happy. That last sentence is a clear representation of how irony can change a persons views, and the entire tone of an essay. The audience will have shifted by reading the last sentence, most likely going back to reread it to laugh at the humor placed strategically in the essay. The topic has now changed from being about how soccer is pointless, to a professor who simply created an argument based on something so micro in the world, and at the end says it is not even an actual problem created a philosophical dilemma as to what is and is not important in the world.
Professor Webb does not take time to build up an ethos simply because it does not matter who writes this article since the article is meant to be taken lightly and with humor. However, the fact that he does teach religion creates an even more comical situation when he mentions God and religion: "Did Jesus wash his disciples' hands at the Last Supper? No hands are divine..." Webb uses Jesus and the last Supper as an example of how our hands are more important than our feet, which further attributes to his argument that sports played with their feet are nonsensical. Webb uses metaphors and similes a number of times throughout his essay as examples as to why feet, soccer, and everything that goes along with the sport of soccer is "Ruining America."
At the end of Webb's hysterical essay filled with hyperbole, simile, metaphor, and many other rhetorical devices he ends with an anecdote of his own life. Where he mentions that his three girls play on traveling soccer teams; the irony shows through in the very last sentence:"Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family." For a man who just spent his time writing about how terrible the game of soccer is and the pointlessness that it encourages, he ends by saying the game makes, not only himself, but his family happy. That last sentence is a clear representation of how irony can change a persons views, and the entire tone of an essay. The audience will have shifted by reading the last sentence, most likely going back to reread it to laugh at the humor placed strategically in the essay. The topic has now changed from being about how soccer is pointless, to a professor who simply created an argument based on something so micro in the world, and at the end says it is not even an actual problem created a philosophical dilemma as to what is and is not important in the world.