Ziyin Li
English 1A
Paul Glanting
October 10, 2014 The rhetoric in Geography of Bliss

In Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner is setting on finding the world's happiest country. He uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science, and humor to investigate where happiness is. Rhetoric has enjoyed many definitions, accommodated differing purposes, and varied widely in what it included. The traditional definition of rhetoric, first proposed by Aristotle, was the art of observing in any given case the “available means of persuasion.” It is such a wise definition. In a broader sense, good rhetoric can refer to the effective use of language in any form of discourse. To me, good rhetoric is persuasive communication that is intended to …show more content…

People living in different countries have different opinions of what happiness is, hence this is Weiner’s argument on the definition of happiness. Secondly, Weiner uses logos to convey that happiness is determined by one’s surroundings. He uses evidence such as pornography and cafés to infer that people enjoy popular trends. For an example, in chapter one, he provides hard evidence about popular trends: “It is a fact of human nature that we derive pleasure from watching other engage in pleasurable acts. This explains the popularity of two enterprises: pornography and cafés. Americans excel at the former, but Europeans do a better job at the latter (5)". Weiner uses this fact to explain that people in different counties are pleased by popular trends according to their country. Generally, people in Europe are pleased by cafés, while people in America are pleased by pornography. Apart of social trends, Weiner discusses how lack of culture has a direct impact on Qataris: “Qataris have no culture. Frankly, I can’t blame on them. If you spent a few thousand years scraping by in the desert, fending off the solid heat, not to mention various invading tribes, you wouldn’t have time for culture" (117). Logos is evident here because Weiner uses common senses to employ that hot climate aggravates people in a negative manner and affects people’s happiness and cultural development. In this case, hot weather deteriorates values on culture, which affects how