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Sallie Le

Professor Miss

UWRT 1104

February 7, 2017

Rhetorical Analysis of a Personal Experience Paper

I was asked by my professor to attend a Charlotte Film Festival and watch a movie for

the experience. After watching the film, I needed to write about my experience. An experience

that I did not realize has similar aspects to my primary discourse. The experience included

anything about the movie itself, the environment or atmosphere while watching the film to the

reaction of everyone surrounding me. Writing the paper about my experience to the public was

not something I usually do and doing so I am writing for a secondary discourse or to someone

that does not share the same primary discourse as me- who speaks and expresses themselves

differently than I do.

This assignment was an experience paper so I believed that this needed to be a paper

written in first person: I walked in the room with the movie already a few minutes in and the

first thought I had was realizing that I will be reading subtitles for 90 minutes(Le 1). The

narration in first person would clarify that this was in my thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the

experience I had at the film festival which could be completely different from another persons

experience. I think that determining the narration is a huge factor in a paper. The first person

point of view provides the audience with a much more reliable and credible source, also known

as ethos. The audience will be able to get the first hand emotion as if they were inside the

writers head, so if they were able to picture the writers description in their head, the writing is
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believable. In this case, the audience will be able to feel the emotions and the connection I had

with the film as I am explaining in detail to what I see and feel. The first person narration will

also help the audience build a personality of the writer through the writers personal style of

diction and sentence structure: Everyone around me was like that too, their body blocks what

the mind actually wants (Le 2). I think that this sentence from the essay exemplifies that the

writer is a bit humorous and light-hearted because I have not heard anyone say that phrase

before.

The paper was mostly written in chronological order, as it starts out with the first

impression of the movie and ends with the reflection on the movie. I think this gives the audience

a build-up of the whole experience and it will allow them to understand the experience better as

if they were there alongside me. This also helps with the idea of ethos. When writing a paper that

is on an experience, there is the build-up of the experience and the fall of the experience as the

experience is not being jumped right into. Writing the paper in chronological order is ethical in

order to effectively explain the experience reliably.

This experience expressed with words on paper became really personal to me because of

the connections made throughout the analysis. The connections I made are unique to me as not

everyone shared my specific interest that I related the movie to. For example, I compared works

under infamous YouTube directors to a film I had never been introduced to that is directed by an

infamous foreign director. I also mentioned the familiarity of reading English subtitles as it

something I had already experienced outside of the Charlotte Film Festival. My personal primary

discourse of watching dramas on a regular basis is mirrored through this experience.

The influence in my writing in this academic paper is noticeably from past experiences. I

wrote about my likes and dislikes of the movie based on what I already liked and disliked. When
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a certain part of the movie reminds me of my interests, I gain a personal emotional connection. It

is shown through the word choice I used when I relate the connections. If I were to like dogs, I

would probably write something like this, the dog I fatefully met the other day, lovingly licked

my face showing its affection to if I were to hate dogs: the dog I bumped into the other day,

disgustingly spread all of its germs onto my face. When I compared the movie to works made

by one of my favorite directors, the word choice were bright and positive and the readers will be

able to tell my feelings through the word choice: I enjoy watching the short series and I think

the quality of the film is notablewith a few flaws (Le 3). Comparing and contrasting my

like and dislikes from outside the experience to the experience itself will allow my personal

emotion get through the words to the audience and this is known as pathos. This is not really

trying to get the audience to like and dislike the same things as the writer, but more

understanding the writer. This also help let the audience emotionally make sense of the writers

choice of expressing the experience.

I think a very intriguing portion about this paper, is the massive amount of heavy and

negative adjectives about the bloody theme in the movie. I used words that naturally would make

the readers emphasize the heavy words without realizing that they are doing it: their dangerous

and life-threatening actions are very thriller-like (Le 2) and it showed bloody guts spilling and

blood splattering (Le 3). The words, life-threatening and bloody guts are detailed and are

not light-hearted words so it really intrigues the reader to be imaginative. The adjectives used

were strong as it makes the audience curious as to what makes me shut my eyes or wince. Not

only does the pattern of adjectives throughout the essay makes the audience curious about the

movie, but also allows the audience to use their imagination and picture the scenes in their head

using the explanations I have given. The gruesome and bloody scenes in the movie gave a heavy
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impact on my reflection of the experience as it stuck out the most to me. The audience will be

able to realize that graphic scenes made an impact on my first film festival screening event.

I think that my writing is very lacking in structure and grammar, but I do think

that the ideas and concepts that I wrote about in this academic paper are able to get to the reader.

The audience will be able to understand the feelings and opinions I have expressed in the paper

as I have related them to general things that people may have experienced outside of the event.

The grammatical errors may hinder the fluid of the paper, but that may also because I grew up

speaking with errors that I never learned how to fix as that is my primary discourse. The way I

speak is interconnected to the way I write and this paper is no exception to that as there is a

difference when expressing to a primary discourse than to a secondary discourse.

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Works Cited

Le, Sallie. Karate Kill Essay for a Liberal Studies class. Arts & Society: Theatre. University of

North Carolina- Charlotte. n.d. Print.