Essay Summary:

Sonia Sotomayor discusses her Latina heritage and the importance of cultural identity in her speech. She uses rhetoric like advanced diction and similes to deepen her message and connect with her audience. Sotomayor emphasizes the significance of cultural diversity in society, though she could have elaborated more on her cultural influences in her career in law and politics.

Essay Grade:

Rubric

Total Score: 42/50

Suggestions for Improvement of Structure, Grammar, Vocabulary, Content Length, and Tone

• Introduce a more explicit thesis statement that directly addresses the rhetorical strategies Sotomayor employs.
• Ensure a logical progression of ideas, with each paragraph building on the last to deepen the analysis.
• Increase the use of transitional phrases to enhance the coherence between paragraphs and ideas.
• Adopt a more formal tone by avoiding colloquial expressions and ensuring precise vocabulary that accurately reflects the sophistication of the analysis.
• Consider expanding the analysis to meet and exceed the minimum word count, allowing for deeper exploration of Sotomayor’s rhetorical choices.

Suggestions for Topic-Related Improvements

• Expand on the analysis of Sotomayor’s diction by exploring additional examples and their specific impact on the audience’s perception of her identity and message.
• Delve deeper into the effectiveness of Sotomayor’s similes, perhaps by examining how they serve to bridge her personal experiences with those of her audience.
• Consider discussing the potential implications of Sotomayor’s rhetorical choices on the broader conversation about diversity and representation in the judiciary.
• Explore how Sotomayor’s cultural references serve not only as a means of conveying her identity but also as a rhetorical strategy to establish credibility and rapport with her audience.
• Analyze the potential counterarguments or criticisms of Sotomayor’s approach and how her rhetorical strategies preemptively address or mitigate these concerns.

Essay:

In her speech, “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” Sonia Sotomayor speaks of her inheritance of her Latina culture and how it came to be despite the large presence of an American culture in her life. She explains that her experiences with those around her helped her learn what it was like to be a Latina and the benefits of identifying as one. She does this with the help of multiple forms of rhetoric, with them being her advanced diction and similes, and these rhetorical devices help her deepen her message and make her claims more personal and meaningful by signifying her connections with her family’s Latino heritage.
Multiple times throughout the speech, Sotomayor utilizes words that have strong or extreme connotations, and these instances help her to highlight her true feelings on the matter and the magnitude of significance that they hold for her. For example, Sotomayor says that part of what makes her Latina “is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy,”(Sotomayor). In this statement, Sonia Sotomayor extends beyond the basic message of music playing a major role in her culture to dig into the reader/listener’s understanding of more extreme language and increase the magnitude of her claim. She is expanding on what she means in her message by using stronger words that have a more specific meaning than other words. Other phrases like “born and bred,” play similar roles as they convey Sotomayor’s exclusiveness to the borders of the United States while not having to explicitly state it. Considering her audience and the rarity of Latina judges, Sotomayor’s extreme language is more understandable to them, and it even gives a strong first impression of the issue regarding the importance of culture and diversity as her audience must learn about social factors that make people do what they do.
Also, instances of similes exist throughout the speech, and they are used to expand the relatability of Sotomayor’s claims. This is notable near the beginning and middle of the speech as Sotomayor claims that “like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty,” and that her “brother, only three years younger, like too many of us educated here, barely speak [Spanish],”(Sotomayor). Despite the many times where she separates herself from other Hispanic groups, Sotomayor’s comparisons to other immigrants allows her to connect her experiences to others while keeping these experiences uniquely her own. In other words, she emphasizes the idea that similar experiences have helped her and others reach different conclusions in the same or similar manner. The many similar factors that help manage the complexities of different cultures are what help to connect the cultures of Sotomayor and many others.
Overall, Sonia Sotomayor’s diction throughout the speech and her usage of similes help to effectively connect her to her audience and deepen her connections to her message by exemplifying her understanding of her own cultural dynamics in addition to other similar cultures. These aspects of Sotomayor’s speech help her to establish her own understanding of the cultural situation within the United States and imply the importance of a diverse society. Though, she could have possibly explained her culture’s role in her deciding to become more involved in society and law in order to expand more on her claims and statements surrounding the duality of cultural diversity in the United States. Though Sotomayor diminishes the role of the political debate surrounding cultural diversity in the United States in changing her cultural identity, she could have addressed her presence in politics in relation to this situation.