Jayaar's Persuasive Speech

I thought you may find this interesting, as Christina and I have debated this topic. This was a persuasive speech I did for English this year.

Carbonated Beverages, Anyone?

There is much debate over what to call carbonated beverages. Some prefer to call them pop, while others prefer to call it soda or soft drinks. The correct way to say it is to say “soft drink.”

The word “pop” can be used in many different ways, which makes it confusing for one to say “pop” instead of “soft drink.” One of the uses of the word “pop” that I found in the dictionary was “A drink or portion of an alcoholic beverage, as a drink of whiskey or a glass of beer.” Therefore, when one says “I had pop tonight” it could mean that they either had a carbonated beverage or that they had an alcoholic beverage. This can be very confusing, to say the least. A meaning for “a pop” is “each or apiece.” That means that if someone said, “I’ll give them to you for $30 a pop,” one wouldn’t know if he was going to pay $30 for each can of pop he bought, or if he was going to pay the person $30 for each of whatever he may have been selling.

“Coke,” though not as dominantly spoken in America as “pop” or “soft drink,” is even more confusing than “pop.” The word coke can mean a number of different things. One of the meanings is “the solid product resulting from the destructive distillation of coal in an oven or closed chamber or by imperfect combustion, consisting principally of carbon: used chiefly as a fuel in metallurgy to reduce metallic oxides to metals.” Consequently, if someone were to ask “can I have coke?” it would be most confusing if the person they were speaking to was someone unfamiliar with the slang word for “carbonated beverages.” Coke, in fact, is irrelevant when talking about carbonated beverages because it is the slang term for Coca Cola, a company that industrializes in making carbonated beverages. “Coke” is also a slang term for “cocaine.” Although, most often times when one hears someone say “I had a coke” they usually don’t relate it to that, but it would just be best to not use the word “coke” when talking about carbonated beverages.

The word “soda” is most prominent in the north-eastern United States. “Soda” is short for the word “sodium,” which is “a soft, silver-white, metallic element that oxidizes rapidly in moist air.” Though carbonated beverages do contain sodium, that is not all that their whole content. One meaning for the word soda, not referring to sodium, is “a drink made with soda water, flavoring, such as fruit or other syrups, and often ice cream, milk, etc.” This does not sound much like the carbonated beverages that one may see on the shelves in grocery stores and gas stations.

To be clearer when talking about carbonated beverages it is good to say “soft drink” which is stated in the dictionary as “a beverage that is not alcoholic or intoxicating and is usually carbonated, as root beer or ginger ale.” That is the one and only meaning for “soft drink.” That would mean that if someone stated “I drank a soft drink tonight” everyone listening would automatically know that they had consumed a carbonated beverage. Consequently, there wouldn’t be much debate as to what the person was talking about, therefore, making the statement much less confusing than using “pop,” “coke,” or “soda.”