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Jacob Aponte

Ms. Friedman

English 101

27 February 2019

Rhetorical Analysis of Toward Sociable Robots

Sociable robots and the research of robots that can naturally interact with humans are a

growing topic in the scientific research scene. Scientists have found a growing number of

applications for these types of robots. The article that I have decided to analyze from a rhetorical

point of view was “Towards Sociable Robots” by Cynthia Breazeal. The main topic of this

article is the innovations of creating sociable robots and the various parts about them. Through

the many growing applications of these type of robots, there are different modes of interaction

that have emerged. These modes have been described in four different classes known as socially

evocative, socially communicative, socially responsive, and sociable. These classes collectively

enable these robots to become more and more sociable with humans and helps the robots to

better understand and be able to react with what they are observing. The paper also examines

other features of sociable robots and uses the vocal turn-taking skills of their own robot, Kismet,

to detail their points. This article does a very good job of using ethos, logos, and many other

methods in order to get its point across in a clear and concise way with plenty of support.

A main portion of Towards Sociable Robots includes information about the four distinct

classes encompassing the different modes of interaction. The first class is socially evocative,

which includes encouraging the creation from people, with the eventual goal being that the

person will interact with their creation. This helps the participant to become more invested and
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interested in the ‘lifespan’ of the creation. Another class is socially communicative, which

involves robots using human social cues and communication modes in order for the person to

feel more comfortable with the robot, and for the interactions to feel more natural and human.

The next class is socially responsive, which is the idea that not only the people are benefitting

from the interaction with the robot, but the robot benefits from the interaction with the human.

This helps the robots to become more humane and learn more natural interaction methods. The

final class is sociable. This class simply includes the skills in robots to become participative

‘creatures’ with their own goals and motivations (Breazeal4). All these classes are very

important when it comes to creating a truly sociable robot. This is very important when it comes

to this article because it talks a lot about finding the truly sociable robot and how to achieve

exactly that and the steps that are being taken.

Ethos, logos, and pathos are used for the purpose of persuading a reader into

believing what the author or speaker is writing or talking about. During Towards Sociable

Robots, Cynthia Breazeal uses these three methods are in order to convince the reader that the

research of sociable robots is important and use the methods to teach them about the research.

Logos is the appeal to a reader’s logic. This can come from the use of facts and statistics,

or even the overall look and organization of the writing. There is an acronym when it comes to

the formatting and structuring of a scientific article. This acronym is IMRaD, which stands for

introduction, methods, results, and discussion or conclusion. This is a very good way of

organizing a scientific article due to the easy to follow flow from the introduction to the methods

tested and results gathered, and then summed up with a conclusion. I believe that Towards

Sociable Robots does a very good job following this structure which helps the reader follow

along and understand what the author is saying. This article’s organizational design is also very
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professional and easy to understand. It is written in two separate columns of text with the left

column being read in full before moving onto the second column. It also does a good job of

intelligently placing the graphs and pictures in places where it doesn’t feel disruptive, as well as

providing text that describes what is being showed in these pictures or graphs.

One concern I have about the overall organization of Towards Sociable Robots is the

seemingly out of place colored picture of the robot used for the case study during this article,

Kismet. The reasoning for this being the only thing throughout this entire article that includes

color is not apparent. I personally think that it throws off the overall uniform feel and flow this

article keeps throughout the rest of its contents. On the other hand, this is the only real picture

that isn’t a graph or diagram in this article. They could have colored it due to this circumstance

and the fact that if it is put in black and white, the different pieces making up the robot may

blend together, and the picture may not come across to the readers as they want it to. Due to this,

I agree with their decision to make it colored and I think it helps the reader get a vision of the

robot they are talking about permanently in their head.

Another example of logos is how the author uses this by citing facts, quotes, and other

methods in order to convey his message to his audience. Quotes are a very important part of

scientific research papers and misuse of quotes can sway a paper from being a credible one to

being a noncredible one. Towards Sociable Robots does a very good job of making sure that it is

appropriately using quotes that support the arguments the author wants to support. That being

said there are not a lot of quotes throughout this paper. More quotes may have helped the author

to explain complicated topics better, but since the paper had a good amount of source usage, it

didn’t have to rely on quotes to get its point across which is a good thing. One example of a

quote the author used was when talking about the paradigms of social robots, she used the quote
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“appearance versus reality” from one of her sources when talking about the fundamental

question that delves into whether the robot is truly socially intelligent or if it is just appearing to

be so. This is due to if the robot truly obtains the skills that I was talking about earlier such as

becoming sociable, socially communicative, and socially evocative. A big part of the research

being conducted is creating a genuinely social robot and translating that into the applicational use

across the world.

Another important part of the analysis of an article is the style and format that the article

is written in. This article was written in the typical formal style of a scientific research paper.

The typical conventions of scientific research papers are very professional and typically uses

pictures, graphs, and diagrams in order to convey the point of the paper. Towards Sociable

Robots does a very good job of following these conventions in order to get its point across. It

uses an appropriate amount of graphs, pictures, and diagrams and only uses them where they are

deemed necessary in order to refrain from overcrowding of these in the article. This article also

makes sure to use professional language throughout. This helps to maintain the style of being

knowledgeable about sociable robots and social interactions. Throughout this paper the author

does a very good job of keeping to the conventions of a scientific paper, and there are no real

places where these conventions are broken.

Ethos is known as the convincing of the audience due to the author’s credibility or vast

knowledge. The author of Towards Sociable Robots is Cynthia Breazeal. She is an associate

professor of Media Arts and Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also known as

MIT (Breazeal2). She has written many publications regarding topics such as sociable robots,

training robots with human feedback, mind-reading and intelligence, and many more. These span

as far back as 2002 and she is still conducting research and experiments to this day. These
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publications show the expertise that Breazeal has in this field (Breazeal3). She also teaches many

high-level courses at MIT revolving around the topic of sociable interactions between humans

and between humans and robots. This is another example showing that she is very

knowledgeable when it comes to the topic of sociable robots. The purpose for her writing this

article and most of her other articles is to inform readers about the current status of sociable

robots, their application in today’s society, and to educate the readers about sociable robots

(Hackel). This article was published with that purpose in mind at MIT in 2004. Much of the

research and articles that come out through the MIT system are published in order to educate and

inform the public or people interested in the particular topic.

Another example of ethos is the acknowledgements in the end of the article. It goes into

how the development of Kismet was funded by outside sources such as the NTT and DARPA.

This goes to show that the research going on here is very important and groundbreaking which is

causing outside sources to become interested and even want to volunteer their own money in

order to help the overall development of the research. It also touches on how Breazeal would like

to thank Sherry Turkle from the MIT Science, Technology, and Society Department for the many

conversations she had with her about this kind of research. This helps to show that there are very

distinguished people who are helping with this research even if it’s not directly.

One main concern I have reading through Towards Sociable Robots about technological

breakthroughs of sociable robots is whether it’s able to withstand the test of time as a relevant

article or not. I think this is very concerning especially considering the exponential growth of

technology and technological research in the recent years. This along with the fact that the article

was written in 2004 makes me believe that the amount of advances made in the previous 15

years has progressed research in this field to much farther points than the ones we are looking at
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in this particular article. That being said I believe that this article may not be relevant looking

from a technological point of view today, but I see this article as a breakthrough in its own time

and crucial when it comes to the overall research and this article will be looked back at as a very

important time in this research and built on as a foundation.

Overall, I believe Towards Sociable Robots does a very good job of informing the

audience and readers of the importance of sociable robots and the details about the advancements

and current state of sociable robots. It does a very good job of using ethos and logos in order to

do this. Within ethos it uses the background and expertise of its main author, Cynthia Breazeal,

as well as the acknowledgments to show its professionalism and credibility. Within logos it uses

things such as quotes, facts, statistics, pictures, and a great organizational structure in order to

gain a sense of trust and credibility from the audience. I only had a limited amount of concerns

that I stated throughout my analysis. These concerns included this article being able to stay

relevant and withstanding the test of time, as well as the lone colored picture of Kismet. That

being said I believe that both concerns were not major, and the picture can actually be justified

quite well. All of this put together gave me the impression of a very good article that gets its

point across very well and will be viewed as an important article in its research field for a long

time to come.

Works Cited
Breazeal, C., et al. “Active Vision for Sociable Robots.” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man,

and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans, vol. 31, no. 5, Sept. 2001, pp. 443–453.

Breazeal, Cynthia. “Home.” Cynthia Breazeal, cynthiabreazeal.media.mit.edu/.

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Breazeal, C. “Social Interactions in HRI: The Robot View.” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man

and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews), vol. 34, no. 2, 4 May 2004, pp. 181–186

Breazeal, Cynthia. “Towards Sociable Robots.” MIT Media Lab, 2004.

Hackel, Matthias, et al. “Designing a Sociable Humanoid Robot for Interdisciplinary Research.”

Advanced Robotics, vol. 20, no. 11, 29 Nov. 2006, pp. 1219–1235.