Rhetorical Analysis Paper

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Jakob Peacock Liliah Galvin ENG 111 19 september, 2018 The Spin Analogy

I had the interesting opportunity to recently read an article written by Roger Schank, the title to this article was “Story Skeletons”. In this article the author gives us a look into the many different wordings of a certain story or event and how the telling of each can be turned and twisted to fit the perspective of the person relating the facts. The stories we hear and tell can be shaped and influenced by our own preconceived beliefs on a subject. The facts of an event or story are not necessarily the backbone of a story but are formed and fitted to the storytellers points of view to get our point across to them or to leave it up to their imagination. The author goes on to explain how two people with the same facts can tell varying stories to manipulate what they want the reader to get from their story I can strongly relate to this because I am a frequent fisherman and I sometimes like to make my few catches sound like monster marlin jumping out of the sea and right into my basket when in reality I either don't catch anything or I just get a few small ones and I say this to try to give my audience the wow factor or if i'm talking to my grandpa I am trying to compete with the fish stories he used to tell me when I was little. The author Roger Schank calls them skeleton stories, as they support some of the facts but in reality put the emphasis on different perspectives. He goes on to further relay that skeletons can

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be insolent, sarcastic, and even humorous or just the regular plain inventive. In some ways a storyteller can see what has happened and in the telling will elaborate or completely omit things that have been seen by the human eye. In a situation like that the author will make the events easy to believe and want the audience he is trying to entertain believe the story too. Story skeletons gives us several different scenarios with several different views. Some are the relationship in the political arena and others are on common everyday relationship problems. In the political arena, variations of the same ideas can change with the international location of the teller and the political position the teller holds. For instance in Schank’s article he refers to a incident when the United States Navy warship shot down a Iranian airliner with 280 passengers, in the belief that the airliner was a threat to the warship. The incident was referred to as a “terrible human tragedy” and a “understandably accident” by President Ronald Reagan.(129) President Reagan chose the skeleton of understandable tragedy, yet the British, Mrs. Thatcher, chose a slightly different skeleton of “justifiability of self defense” thus engaging another way of explaining the facts. Then they move on to Libya’s official press release calling the incident an attack and a”horrible massacre perpetrated by the United States”. This reference by Arab leaders is what they refer to as “state terrorism”, which is the norm for Arab countries but virtually unheard of hear in the United States. We need to realize that all of the events fit nicely into the spin each different country has put on the entire accident. First it was a terrible human tragedy, then it became a justifiable defense and

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finally it was considered an act of terrorism by the United States. Each explanation had a plausible skeleton/spin for each scenario. The author continues to explain that the selection of a skeleton is an art and nothing more. A person can see and tell a story with any spin they put on it by elaboration and omission of fact. Memory also plays a large part in the formation of a story and the retelling of the story can in fact turn into belief of the events. In some political stories the script is written for the speaker and the opinion of the speaker is not allowed to be shared with the audience. The old saying there is two sides to every story is a very true statement and the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle of both stories. Emotion can also play a very large part in the telling and formation of a story. The speaker will most likely want his audience to see him in a favorable light and will therefore embellish on the poor choices made by an individual. Behavior comes into play as we have a choice to make in who to believe. We, as humans, always look for an explanation of behavior for ourselves and for others and we tend to recognize patterns over a length of time. People are then set up to remember events in a certain way and draw conclusions based on those observations of previous behavior. Storytellers are sometimes forced to shorten the telling of a story and thus may omit relevant facts that could sway the opinion of the audience. So in conclusion we as humans tend to refer to the same skeletons over and over in our lives and we develop a point of view that is not flexible. Many outside influences will contribute to the truth of a story and the accumulation of facts and we need guidelines to help us make a determination as to the consistent telling of the same story.

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We use many things like logos the appeal of fact or statistics to persuade the audience. Or the author might use pathos which is the appeal to emotions, or ethos can be used which appeals to ethics. And often the case the author uses all three to build up his argument. These appeals are only as good as the person using them so if you are so if your good na using facts or appealing to people's emotions to gain their attention you will be a successful storyteller and even persuader.

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Work Cited Schank, Roger C.”Story Skeletons” Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st century. Pearson. 2016. 128-140