PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

51What’s it like when you hear your calling?Will you remember where you were?Will you ignore it? Or will you listen?What if it calls you to go halfway around the world?To share your skills.To serve people you’ve never met?To do things you never thought you could?What will you do when you hear your calling?Peace Corps. Life is calling. How far will you go?This television advertisement calls on the viewer to listen to the voices within. Thetelevision spot opens with a 60-something couple sitting at an outdoor café reading themorning news. The woman appears to have heard something and looks to the sky. Thisimage is followed by several other people doing the same, stopping their activitiesbecause they have heard “a calling.” The advertisement successfully targets the majorrecruitment groups. The first woman to hear the calling is part of a married couple intheir retirement years. Next, a white woman in her 30s looks over her cubicle to find thecalling, the narrator simultaneously says, “Will you remember where you were?” Then awhite 30ish business man waits at a busy city crosswalk and hears the call, and thenarrator says, “Will you ignore it? Or will you listen?” A white-haired, balding whiteman at an airport comes into focus as the narrator reads “What if it calls you to gohalfway around the world?” This is followed by a young college student in her schoollibrary passing a globe. As she passes, it spins and calls to her. The narrator reads theremainder of the copy as finally, an African-American college-aged man hears something