Summary of Safwat Saleem and “why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent”
What is the meaning of normal? Is your description of normal the same as others around you? Artist, graphic designer and filmmaker, Safwat Saleem, discusses the complexity of the word “normal” on Ted Talk. Safwat Saleem begins his speech talking about a reoccurring dream where he would wake into a room full of people and avoid any type of communication. People would ask for his name and he would just be silent. He was afraid of his voice being an embarrassment because of the way it sounded. Saleem uses his personal story to connect and bring his audience together. He talks about public Anxiety; being asked to speak when you aren’t comfortable. For example when he posted his first video on youtube, at first he was receiving positive comments from people. However, he soon started seeing negative comments about his stutter and his Pakistani accent. This made him not use his real voice anymore causing him to completely stop talking. To help him overcome this he began to question what people mean when they say a subject is normal. Saleem uses allusion based on a book that has the idea of how different people use the term normal. Saleem uses the rhetorical strategy logos by referring to an Ancient Greek writer by the name of Homer to give a better understanding to the audience. Saleem is arguing that nothing can be considered to be not normal because times will continue to change and something we see as abnormal now can end up being normal overtime. For example a white man has a higher chance of receiving a job than a black man due to his last name and skin color. This is argued by Saleem because it is simply racism and we need to change this idea and expand our definition of normal for a better world. We need to stop judging others negatively for them not being “normal”.
Artist, graphic designer and filmmaker, Safwat Saleem, discusses the complexity of the word “normal”. In his speech “why i keep speaking up even when people mock my accent” he defines the word “normal” to give a new perspective to people before they judge. As a child Saleem was born with a stutter and that made him self conscious to speak up. Saleem would never raise his hand and spent most of his time in a bathroom. He was an introvert who had a hard time communicating because his voice wasn’t “normal”. That soon led him to completely stop using his voice instead use a cartoon voice for his work. In his speech on Ted Talk he speaks in a way where the audience is in his shoe feeling the same emotions.
One of the rhetorical analyses featured in Saleem’s speech is Pathos and Logos to appeal the audience’s emotions and use logic to persuade them. From the beginning of his speech, he portrays his experiences growing up. Saleem was always a quiet child and would avoid conversation as much as possible. He struggled speaking due to his stutter and would run away from the phone in his own home. At the beginning of his speech he says ,“I used to have this recurring dream where I’d walk into a roomful of people, and I’d try not to make eye contact with anyone. Until someone notices me, and I just panic… I’m just quiet, unable to respond. After some awkward silence, he goes, “Have you forgotten your name?” And I’m still quiet. And then, slowly, all the other people in the room begin to turn toward me and ask, almost in unison” This type of scenario from his experience helps develop Saleem’s struggle and how insecure he is to speak . Saleem is afraid he’ll stutter so he simply chooses not to speak. With the use of specific diction like “panic”, “quiet”, and “awkward”, we as the audience see how he truly felt during his speech. Using words like these appeal to the audience because it’s something we can all relate to.
By Saleem using Pathos and specific diction, he helps the audience draw a picture of an event none of the audience would want to go through. It makes a connection and grabs their attention wanting to know more . As the speech progresses, saleem transitions from Pathos to Logos. He mentions how he received hate from people watching his work on youtube. It brought him back to memories of his childhood ,being bullied for his voice. In his speech, he says “ Using my highly edited voice in my work was a way for me to finally sound normal to myself. But after the comments on the video, it no longer made me feel normal. And so I stopped using my voice in my work. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be normal. And I’ve come to understand that “normal” has a lot to do with expectations (4:48)”. In this part of the speech, the audience has already heard his emotional take on bullying but now what he thinks of it after all these years. Saleem had mentioned that he no longer felt normal using a normal edited voice, and in fact he felt special. He felt different from everyone else like he did growing up because of his accent and stuttering. This statement grabs the audience in because it’s like a climax in his speech. This is where the audience realizes the main claim Saleem is trying to preach. We are all different in our own ways and normal cant be used to describe anyone in the world. His transition from appealing to emotion to appealing to logic further grabs the audience’s attention and desire to know more.
Safwat Saleem uses Allusions to the educational part of his audience to provide a greater understanding of his argument. In his Ted talk, Saleem refers to a story of an Ancient Greek writer named Homer. Homer saw colors differently from others. For example, a blue sea would be seen as a red sea to Homer. Saleem concludes that a color can be all around us, but we can simply not have the ability to see it. He supports that claim by giving examples of stereotypes like “resumes with white-sounding names are more likely to get more callbacks than resumes with black-sounding names (Audio 6:52).” Saleem questioned why this is seen as normal to people when there is clearly discrimination going on. He answers this by explaining how normal has a lot to do with the expectations of people. They expect it to be this way because that’s how they grew up seeing it. In 2014, data showed only about 11 percent of the books had a character of color other than white. This takes away children of color minds from achieving goals in life when their favorite characters aren’t even the same. Saleem concludes his speech by persuading the audience to “continuously challenge our notion of normal because doing so is going to allow us as a society to finally see the sky for what it is (Audio 10:00).” This allusion and statistics help support his argument and even pushes the audience to explore what is “normal”. Saleem concludes his speech with his animated voices which brings laughter to the audience. This humor leaves the audience with a smile and getting a good feeling from Saleem. Saleem has been through a depressing life stage as a child for simply not taking a “normal” way. He would spend his time mostly alone because he didn’t have any friends. He delivered his speech on Ted Talk to persuade the human race to explore deeper down on the meaning of normal. Saleem argues that social normality should not exist because what is seen as being “normal” is all based on the perspectives of others’ opinions.
