go together to help support your original specific purpose” (“Using Common”). The specific
purpose of Birdsong’s speech is to inform the audience of flaws in how society thinks about
poverty and persuade them to support the hard work of impoverished people. Her speech can be
broken down into five main categories. These categories include introducing the problem of
poverty and stating the solution, sharing examples of poor yet hard working people, describing
her own experience of being poor, explaining the flaws in the system, and persuading listeners to
support the ideas and hard work of people living in poverty. By including these five themes
throughout her speech, Birdsong provides logistical evidence to support her overarching
Love 3
argument. In addition to using logos to strengthen the validity of her arguments, the speaker
utilizes ethos to present the authority by which her argument can be trusted.
Birdsong establishes ethos, or credibility, by using examples from her personal
experiences. She begins to lay a foundation for her credibility by discussing her involvement
with people living in poverty and ways that she has fought for their rights. She states, “I have
worked with people just like them for more than 20 years” (Birdsong, 00:05:44). Speaking about
her participation in marginalized communities helps to demonstrate her authority on the topic of
poverty. Birdsong uses a more personal example from her life in her speech by describing what it
was like to be poor growing up. She says, “I was raised by a quietly fierce single mother in
Rochester, New York. I was bussed to a school in the suburbs, from a neighborhood that many of
