Rhetorical Analysis Of 'The Digital Parent Trap'

Rhetorical devices are used in essays to persuade the readers into looking at situations in a different perspective or to boil up the reader’s emotions. In other cases, rhetorical devices are used to display one’s truth. The truths displayed in the essays being discussed have to do with unjustness of the Vietnam War.

Rhetorical devices are devices that are used to convey a meaning to the reader and create emotions through different types of language. Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical devices such as personification, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to emphasize and establish the theme of losing faith.

Additionally, Donna uses the appeals to logos and pathos throughout her article, displaying student’s comments during the survey which show:

In addition from the two previews rhetorical strategies, the article “How Social Media Is Having a Positive Impact on Our Culture” have a good example of rhetorical strategy when it comes to ethos. One example is when “he elaborates how the internet and social media makes society to act upon actions that are never seen before. Also, that the internet is very difficult yet entertaining and we often do not appreciate it as much as we should” (613). By this time, the author is preparing himself to establish his trustworthiness by adding, “consider peer-to-peer networking as just one example, where the tasks are distributed among the group to form a whole” (613). The audience can conclude that he has the knowledge necessary in order to build his

Rhetorical strategies are a great way for an author to get their tone and what they want to share to their reader. In Barbara Jordan’s Becoming Educated she uses rhetorical strategies to do just that. Jordan uses repetition and diction to increase her effectiveness of her message. She does so that the reader can also relate to what she is going through. By using repletion and diction she weaves these rhetorical devices throughout her experience to increase its effectiveness to convey her voice and her personal sense of growth.

Over the summer, we were asked to write a rhetorical analysis essay. I vividly remember reading the prompt and having no idea what to do. At the time, I had only a limited understanding of the words ethos, pathos, and logos, but somehow I managed to write a three page essay on the rhetoric of Cesar Chavez’s article. When we got back from summer vacation, we learned more about how to write a rhetorical analysis. We learned about SOAPStone, which stands for speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. I applied my knowledge of SOAPStone to analyzing “Two Ways of Seeing a River” and “To My Old Master”. Through SOAPStone, I was able to easily develop an introduction to my rhetorical analysis essays. Next up was learning how to identify rhetorical devices. Through reading Robert F. Kennedy’s

The contrast between technology and humans is talked about in Richard Louv’s article from Last Child in the Woods. He uses great strategies to get his point across to the readers. Louv wants everyone to realize how the times have changed and how important technology has become in our lives. He wants to give us a better understanding of how technology has changed our lives. In this article Louv uses rhetorical strategies to prove to his readers that his points are valid. These strategies are telling stories, using important names, and making jokes.

People claim that new developments have caused kids to be so dependent on their devices, that they can't think for themselves. This claim can also be turned around by saying that technology has given kids more opportunities and chances to learn, and in particular, more opportunities to write (Source 7, Clive Thompson). An example of this is a study done at Stanford University, where it was discovered that Stanford students did a stunning 38 percent of their writing outside of the classroom (Source 7, Clive Thompson). With the developments of E-mail, texting, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, younger people are constantly writing in their every day lives. In the past, people would, for the most part, stop writing once the finishes their education. Now however, people are more comfortable, and more used to, writing. And while the argument that technology has decreased level of the vocabulary and vernacular of young people is true in some cases, the increase in writing shown by young people has led to a greater ability to convey information to other people, and a greater comfort in talking to people they don't know (Source 7, Clive Thompson). As Andrea Lunsford says, "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek Civilization" (Source 7, Clive

Authors use different writing techniques in order to convey a message and/or persuade the reader. Rhetorical writing is the art used by authors to influence the audience with the way they play with their words. In the passage from “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, Louv uses rhetorical strategies such as the structure of his writing, his intelligent use of anecdotes and examples, and his appeal to emotions.

This paper is about the understanding of the Rhetorical Structures as they pertain to audience, purpose, and context and how they affect the argument of whether taxes should be raised on higher income brackets in order to fund social programs for at-risk and underserved, low income children. I will discuss the relationship between the audience, purpose, and context to the context of the argument.

Founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, in her speech at the 1925 birth control conference, The Children’s Era, explains the downfalls in American society when it comes to raising children. Through this speech, Sanger is trying to further promote her nonprofit organization and display the benefits of birth control. She appears to show compassionate characteristics towards children, more specifically the future American children, as she adopts an urgent tone to encompass her listeners into her ultimate goal, widespread, effective birth control methods.

Rhetorical devices serve a major purpose in all types of writing. The intent of them is to help put forth a writer's argument or story. In the essay “Year of the Blue-Collar Guy” published on November 6, 1989 by Steve Olson, some of these devices can be recognized. A couple of the rhetorical strategies found in Olson’s essay are humor, imagery, introduction and conclusion, thesis, stereotypes, counterpoints, tautology, and syllepsis.

Five years from now, the piece read for this class I will most likely remember is St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. This short story impressed me the most is girls raised by wolves sent to a school to be educated and civilized by nuns. In rhetoric, a rhetorical device is a technique that an author Karen Russell uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective, using sentences designed to encourage or provoke a rational argument from an emotional display of a given perspective or action.

Tristan Harris’s How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds- from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist published on May 18th, 2016 shows how specific rhetorical techniques develop purpose. Harris graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science, and Bachelor of Computer Science. “Harris focused on Human Computer Interaction, while dabbling in behavioral economics, social psychology, behavior change and habit formation “ (website 1) “Working for google, he studied how technology influences a billion users’ attention, well-being and behavior.” (Website 1) But has since moved on to work for Time Well Spent. “ I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as a design ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked”(Harris, Pg. 1) Harris tells the readers about his extensive research to create credibility with the audience.

Technology is quickly becoming a huge part of day to day life for nearly everyone. If you walk around most places, you will see a large percent of people either on their cell phones, on their computers, or using some other electronic device. While some of it is being used for business and other important things, most of the time, it is more for entertainment. It is because of this that people claim that technology is changing the way people think today. In his article “Is Google making us stupid”, Nicholas Carr argues that people have become dependent upon the internet for information rather than having to work to figure it out. In the article “Does texting effect writing”, Michaela Cullington argues that people’s texting is effecting the way people write because people don’t show emotion when texting, so that is translating back into their writing. Both arguments are effective, both appeal to emotion, but the more effective argument is Carr’s because it is a more sound argument based on logic and credibility.