In the brightly lit doctors’ office, patients hurriedly rush in the doors into a blast of heat, as warm as the summer sun, to get out of the blistering cold winter air. The warm friendly face of the receptionist with bright blonde hair and vibrant green eyes greets every patient as they step up to the clear glass window to check-in for their scheduled appointments. The pleasant receptionist dutifully retrieves the patients chart and happily chirps “please have a seat in the waiting room, enjoy some decadent French roast coffee while you are waiting. The waiting room is filled with gigantic, darkly rich maroon colored chairs and vast amounts of reading material. In the middle of the room there is an octagonal five foot tall fish tank filled with a plentiful amount of tropical fish dotted with vibrant reds, blues, yellows, and oranges blissfully swimming. There are two large 64 inch HDTVs’ with gleaming bright screens hung strategically on the North and West sides of the walls so every patient can view them from any angle in the room.
Each television plays informational videos showing a cheerful dark haired woman, beaming, with vivid white and straight teeth. Description 2- Negative Effect In the scarcely lit doctors’ office patients sluggishly trudge in through the heavy, drab steel grey doors trekking in black slushy snow from the cold and icy parking lot. A middle-aged woman sits in front of a glass window speckled with a film of dust and dirt checking in patients for their unscheduled appointments. The receptionist with overly dyed platinum blonde hair and bright metallic pink lipstick smudged on her teeth, grumpily mumbles “Take a seat.
The waiting room smells of must and is filled with uncomfortable chairs covered in a scratchy dull red material and out-of-date magazines with ripped off front covers. In the middle of the room there in a small fishbowl covered in fuzzy green algae, devoid of any underwater life. There is one aged, minuscule television hidden on the northwest corner wall with an empty screen which is enveloped in dust. Self-Reflection In writing these contrasting paragraphs, I realized how using certain words to describe a subject can instantly make the readers thoughts stray to either positive or negative thinking.
In my positive description I used words such as “warm”, “friendly”, and “vibrant” to express a positive connotation. There are also words like “friendly”, “dutifully”, “happily”, and “cheerful” to try to drive the reader into imagining the setting as a welcoming and hospitable environment. I also tried to incorporate figurative language by adding the simile “into a blast of heat, as warm as the summer sun” to help the reader instantly convey what the atmosphere felt like as soon as entering the scene.
In the second description, I utilized negative connotation such as, “drab”, “dirt”, and “musty” to relate a soiled atmosphere to the reader, in contrast to the clean, friendly, and vibrant atmosphere of the first paragraph. I also created different effects by omitting certain details. For example, in the positive description I wrote “Each television plays informational videos” but, in the negative description I mentioned “television hidden on the northwest corner wall with an empty screen”.
Also, in the negative description I stated a direct view by having the receptionist greet the patient with “take a seat” to suggest an unfriendly environment. Using these strategies to create a persuasive effect was a challenge, but in all extended my knowledge in how to create a more graphic view for the reader. Thinking rhetorically has helped me to extend my thoughts and think about how others may view looking at a certain setting or object. In order to think this way I had to use many more descriptive techniques than I usually would in a research paper or essay and it made the task all that much more out of the ordinary.
