Stories by Gabrielle Lopez on Medium

Rhetorically Analyzing a Video

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 04:38:35 GMT

Youtubers have many ways of getting their audience to engage with them. Whether it be through gaming, vlogging, simple storytimes, or other types of videos, YouTube creators are able to connect with their audience one way or another. One of my favorite creators, “lilsimsie,” creates gaming content around the popular game “The Sims 4”. This game has many add-ons that cost money, so I like watching her in-depth reviews of the expansion, stuff, or kit packs that the game offers before I spend my own money. Her review of the newest expansion pack, “The Sims 4: Adventure Awaits,” was full of visuals, so I knew what I would be buying. She uses ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to her viewers, giving her audience the exact number of items the pack gives players, how those items can be used in-game, and her own personal opinion as a longtime player on the pack itself. Her review makes it easy, so players know exactly what they are getting, and I find it helpful since she outlines how much these add-ons are. In the end, I didn’t buy the pack… it wasn’t for me. But I think it’s helpful for all players since we all use add-ons for different gameplay.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/w032jq4pzgc?si=Ee5aTuEgmZUdaQWA

Studying Rhetoric Among Three Professions

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 04:25:38 GMT

Rhetoric is about how people communicate and persuade, and politicians, lawyers, and preachers show rhetorical techniques in their work. These are people whose words can influence others and their followers, clients, and constituents. Whether they’re running a country, winning a case, or guiding a whole community, I think it’s important to look at how they speak because they each have the ability to shape opinions and decisions in huge ways. Politicians use their rhetoric to get support and make their ideas sound convincing. Lawyers have to persuade judges and juries, which can completely change the outcome of someone’s life. Preachers use their voice to inspire people, strengthen their beliefs, and gain new followers for their place of worship. Studying how all three communicate helps us understand how persuasion actually works in real-life situations. Overall, it’s interesting because their words have power. Learning how that power works can make us better listeners and better communicators with our own work and with each other.

Anti-Asian Rhetoric

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 16:04:55 GMT

As Anti-Asian Rhetoric is on the rise, I found it interesting how we got here in the first place. Personally, I consume Asian media and products. One of my favorite TV shows is a Japanese anime. My first concert? A K-Pop group. My tattoos? I have some inspired by Japanese films that I love deeply. I consume this media a lot, yet I’m around people at times who are so blatantly racist they don’t even know it. I work for a private practice in a conservative area in Texas. The amount of times I’ve heard COVID-19 referred to as the “China Virus” is just heartbreaking. Of course, those who I’ve been around who have said such thing happen to be Trump supporters. Shocking, right? One thing I found interesting this week was the power of hateful hashtags fulled by Trump’s 1st administration. I thought it was interesting how we read about people committing hate crimes in the name of the Trump administration and xenophobia. Another thing I found interesting is how long this violence has been going on in this country. I don’t think that we really touch on Anti-Asian hate as much as we need to in public education, considering how many of us don’t have much of an understanding of or know the contexts of discriminatory laws such as: the Page Act of 1875, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Foreign Miners Tax of 1852; sadly I could go on. Overall, there’s a lot of work still to be done to combat Anti-Asian rhetoric, and it is progress such as the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act that can can lead to a better understanding and acceptance of the Asian community.

Political Rhetoric

Gabrielle Lopez — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 03:23:48 GMT

After reviewing “Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate”, where speech and linguistic patterns are illustrated from both liberals and conservatives, I’ve learned a lot in regards in how we communicate. Overall, my understanding is this: liberals can think and speak abstractly (critically think) while conservatives can’t. It is evident in the way we speak, and examples from conservative politicians show this. It was shown that Donald Trump, the conservative favorite, uses language at a 5th grade level. The president of the United States speaks like a 5th grader. I’ve seen a Trump temper tantrum, so I know that his language use is limited, but it’s disappointing when a linguist has it in writing after studying his speech. Of course, the study was done during his 2016 campaign, I can imagine what linguists are saying in 2025. This lack of language used by conservatives shows us many instances where our country’s infrastructure, such as education, has failed us. Primarily conservative states lead in low literacy rates and generally rank last in education. The consequences of this can be seen by most Republican conservatives, the current party leading this country. This lack of communication and language skills has furthered racial, LGBTQ+, and religious hate; as well as the rise of white supremacy. So, while conservatives may label liberals as “woke” (meaning you can think critically about social issues), it is evident that the descriptor means that you’re not communicating like a 5th grader.

Race and Music

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 05:12:43 GMT

Music exists across all cultures, and different types of music (style, language, etc.) can be seen all around us everyday. When it comes to race and music, there have been plenty of instances where artists of color are intentionally snubbed for awards, advertised less than white artists, or not boosted in social media algorithms, etc. I don’t think that this oppression is ok, and that there is still work to be done by big companies to give artists of color the recognition they deserve. At the 2023 Grammy’s, Bad Bunny, a popular Latino artist who’s native language is Spanish, was performing and his lyrics and speech weren’t being shown for at-home viewers. The broadcast channel, CBS, knew prior that he was performing, yet there was no effort to show his lyrics. Instead, the captioning read “SINGING NON-ENGLISH” for both his performance and his speech later on. With how many Spanish speakers there are, they couldn’t get Spanish captioning? For English speakers, whether for a performance or an impromptu speech, they have English captions. Why doesn’t Spanish get the same service? Is it because he’s Latino? Sadly, Bad Bunny being Latino is all some people need for this racism to be considered ok. It’s not. It hurts no one if you put captioning in Spanish if the performer is speaking Spanish. And even if you don’t speak the language, English or Spanish, you can still appreciate the music.

Familect

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 03:30:59 GMT

In my household, we have a lot of phrases and sayings that we reference in our conversation. One example is from the movie “Talladega Nights”, that has a lot of funny lines that my family uses on the regular. Other movies such as “Stepbrothers”, “The Godfather”, “Goodfellas” and others are often in the rotation of what we say depending on the conversation. Sometimes, when one of my family member’s says something funny or that we find funny depending on the context, we’ll use it in our conversations. One time, my mom told my brother to “move stuff around!” when he was looking for something infront of him. Now, we use it for everything, even when my mom is looking for something. I use these sayings and references exclusively with my family, making up our familect.

Race and Skin Color

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 03:08:41 GMT

After reviewing the materials from this week, I think that the two most interesting pieces of information were how skin color evolved and how we are able to determine someones ethnicities through science. I knew that the amount of melanin we had depended on where our family of origin came from geographically, but the TED Talk by Nina Jablonski: “Skin Color is an Illusion”, illustrates how skin and the amount of melanin people have is dependent on the amount of sun we get and how our respective ethnicities evolved over time. I think this is important because I don’t think that we talk about how skin color evolved over time and why it happend based on geography. Of course, there are religious beliefs, but I think it’s important to recognize how we evolved over time. Another thing I found interesting was how services such as 23andMe use science to trace our roots. I thought it was interesting how they use samples from around the world to let people see where they come from and potentially find relatives near and far. Using DNA/genetic testing and taking account of our human evolution can help us all understand each other more and help us understand the social construct of “race”.

The Importance of Rhetoric

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 05:25:06 GMT

Studying rhetoric, the use of language, applies to our everyday lives. Our news, our conversations, our social media, it all contains rhetoric that depends on the context. My everyday consists of my job, watching the news, browsing the internet, and talking to friends and family. The way I use rhetoric varies on who I’m with, what I’m doing, and what I’m reading. My job consists of my communicating by email to clients and calling health insurance companies. Asking and answering a client’s questions in a professional manner, speaking to an insurance representative to get the best information I can, decoding the insurance company’s rhetoric on a client’s insurance policy all matters and is pivotal to my job. When I’m not working, I’ll go home and see what the news says for the day or talk to friends. Understanding political rhetoric is important to me, especially when it’s biased. Differentiating rhetoric from reality is something I try my best to do, and studying rhetoric helps enhance those skills. Reading into credible sources, looking at word choice that shows bias, and understanding the overall message of publications are important rhetorical skills I implement into everyday life. Overall, studying rhetoric and the way we use language in our day to day is critical to our understanding of the media we consume, the conversations we have, and how effective we can be at our daily tasks.

Race v. Ethnicity v. Nationality

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 05:03:45 GMT

Having labels to point where a person comes from can be both a good and bad thing. I think that race, ethnicity, and nationality are all completely different and serve different purpose. However, I think that out of those three options, race is the label that causes most of the issues we see everyday. Race is a man-made label, and stems from ideologies of racial superiority and using stereotypes to label someone. In my opinion, it’s done more harm than good.

Ethnicity, a term that points to someone’s ethnic background where someone’s families come from, makes more sense to me. It allows us to be specific with who we are, and be more specific with where we come from. Unlike “race”, ethnicity is more about where the person comes from rather than using a stereotype or looking at someone’s skin color for hints. More and more people today say they come from multiple ethnic backgrounds, so figuring out someone’s race is getting harder at first glance.

Nationality, a term used to describe someone’s citizenship, is another common label. It’s argued that where you were born (like someone born in the U.S.) determines your citizenship, however it’s also possible to obtain your citizenship through other means. There are many groups of people across the world without nations of their own such as the Kurdish and Palestinians of the Middle East. With all this in mind, someone’s ethnicity can match their nationality or not. Someone who was born in Italy with Italian family going back generations would be an example. But, there are many groups in the U.S. for example, where it could change.

These labels we use are all dependent on how much we know about a person, and how they choose to identify themselves. It’s not fair for us to assume someone’s ethnic background without knowing them. And it’s especially wrong to use the physical characteristics of a person to determine their race. So when people say “why can’t we just say we’re all the human race?” I agree to an extent. Yes, we are all humans that come from different cultures and backgrounds. Our differences in ethnicities and nationalities should be celebrated, not a tool used for racism and racial extremism.

Styles of Communicating

Gabrielle Lopez — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:10:53 GMT

Communicating with others is a skill, and I don’t think we realize how much goes into having a conversation with someone. Pragmatics and other parts of communicating are important, and the way we communicate with each other changes from person to person. Two people in my life: my brother and a close friend, speak to me in completely different ways. My brother, a 16 year old, speaks to me in memes and the latest TikTok brain-rot. It’s funny, but he also has no filter. Most of the time he understands when and how to approach me based on the vibe I’m giving off, but he often will word-vomit. He’s one of my favorite people, and I wouldn’t change how he speaks to me… most of the time. In turn, one of my coworkers turned close friend and I don’t speak to eachother the same way my brother and I do. She will text me with LOL variations all the time, even if she’s delivering bad news to lighten the mood. If I’m out when she’s working, she’ll write what needs to be taken care of on sticky notes, never leaving out a smiley face. If it’s something she knows I’ll hate hearing, she’ll write “I’M SORRY” with hearts and smiley faces, so I won’t be as annoyed. Like my brother, a lot of our conversations include memes, internet phrases, and laughter. Regardless of the contents of our conversations for both my brother and friend, I wouldn’t change the way I communicate with them at all.