Rhetorical Analysis Of `` The Science Of Shopping `` By Malcolm Gladwell

Pathos is the writers attempt to appeal to the audience emotions. For instance, “In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. ‘“I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,”’ the headline said” (Lukianoff and Haidt). The authors appeal to emotion paints a picture in the reader’s mind, further opening their eyes to make them feel how the professor was feeling. Also, naming the article “The Coddling of the American Mind” was a great was to represent how the problem was being addressed. The use of the word “coddling” reflected the way colleges were treating their students like babies. Enforcing trigger warnings to protect the students are not helping them for the future. This appeals to pathos because the audience gets a glimpse of what the after effect of “babying” has on

Within The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls uses the rhetorical device pathos to help connect with her readers and make it so they can better comprehend her story and the difficulties she often had to deal with. “Mom said Dad was never the same after Mary Charlene died. He started having dark moods, staying out late and coming home drunk and losing jobs (Walls,28)”. This passage is a prime example of pathos seeing

The next element in the rhetorical situation is pathos. Pathos is defined as connecting the author and the reader using emotion. Pathos is more reader dependent than the other elements. Pathos helps the writer know to know their audience and who they are intending to write for. Connecting to the audience using pathos is a strong way to get the support of the reader. The audience needs to be moved by what they’re reading. Without pathos, the writer won’t be able to properly connect to their audience.

Pathos is used in order to link the essay with the reader’s emotions and ethos is used to show the writers moral character. For example, pathos is used when Kozol speaks to a student of a Bronx high school, “Think of it this way,” said a sixteen-year-old girl. “If people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone…how would they feel?...I think they’d be relieved.” (Kozol 205) This part of the essay really made me feel sad for this girl who lives in a society where she has grown up feeling like now one cares about her or others of her race.

Pathos appeals to the reader’s emotions by using emotional stories and imagery. Pathos strategies are often used to grab and hold the reader’s attention. Emotional or personal stories give the reader an opportunity to emotionally relate to the story, and allows them to be emotionally connected. An emotionally connected reader is more interested in the story that a reader who is not emotionally connected.

First let’s talk about how Sherman Alexie uses pathos to appeal to the reader’s emotions. In his writing when he is using this technique he says, “I read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.” (Alexie). This quote is successful because his word choice is helping to make the reader feel emotionally attached to the reasoning behind why he is doing what he is doing. Also, he says towards the end of his writing, “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” (Alexie) He does a good job with his word choice in these short sentences. It makes the reader engaged in the writing because he is being assertive, and he knows what he wants. Which what he wants is the reader to understand his point that something needed to be done and he was going to be the one to do it. Both of these quotes that I have pulled from his text reaches the readers on an emotional level because he makes it seem that knowing how to read saved his life and now that he knows how to read and

Conclusively, Gladwell uses pathos. Gladwell appeals to emotions through vivid images. Gladwell states that “Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying-- which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements-- books are simply a barren string of words on the page.” Gladwell is giving an extremely vivid image of someone playing a game, rather than simply reading words written on a page. This proves emotion by being able to see an idea of gameplaying and not just seeing words written on a blank page. Gladwell also appeals to emotions through properties of a book. Gladwell states that “But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path” (“Brain Candy”). This is an example of emotions because books are isolating and not open-minded because they follow a set of distinct rules.

Nicholas Carr addresses and adapts to his audience by effectively using pathos, a rhetorical appeal. The author captures his audience by appealing to their emotions. For example, Carr explains on page five,

Pathos is used very effectively in Seth Davis’s article. By using pathos he is helping to expose the purpose of the article in a way that you wouldn’t think of before. Davis states “As the father of three children under the age of eight, I can only pray that someone “exploits” my sons someday

With the analysis of rhetorical strategies underway, I would like to discuss the presence of pathos in the speech. Sanger was a very passionate writer, and this allowed her to be absorbed into the paper. I noticed that, in Sanger’s speech, there were many emotionally loaded words. For example:

Knowing that this will provoke the reader's emotions and pull them in. She relies on using pathos, because she knows that if she reaches out to the audience's heart that she will be able to persuade them easier. Another area where she used pathos is when she claims“the horror of creeping depression or delusions that of peer derision, the sound of the C word in the hallways: crazy, man, he’s crazy, haven’t you seen him, didn’t you hear?” speaking of how us and others respond to mental illnesses. She uses the rhetorical device of pathos to make her claim seem more convincing and

Malcolm Gladwell is currently a non-fiction writer for The New Yorker. After college, he took a journalism position in Indiana and later took a position in Washington. In 1996, he moved to New York, where he is today. He has written five books and each has been on the New York Times best seller list (Famous Authors). In his first year of working as a journalist for The New Yorker, he wrote, “The Science of Shopping.” In this piece, Gladwell objectively evaluates Paco Underhill’s research within the business industry. Underhill “would have from a hundred to five hundred pages and pages of carefully annotated tracking sheets and anywhere from a hundred to five hundred hours of films” for each experiment that he conducts (99). With Underhill’s determination and research, and Gladwell’s journalistic qualities, this report changes the way anyone views shopping.

ii. Topic Sentence – Pathos is referred to as the literature’s emotional appeal to the audience’s senses or imagination.

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

There is science behind everything, including shopping, there are reasons why stores are arranged a certain way it is not just because it looks “pretty”, but how do store managers know where to place certain items in certain places? And does it improve sales? Malcolm Gladwell wrote “The Science of Shopping” in which he reveals that the reason why stores are organized a specific way is because they hire people such as Paco Underhill. According to Gladwell he is a “retail anthropologist” and an “urban geographer” which means he studies the shopping behavior. When Underhill is hired he sets up cameras all around the store and after a few days of filming people as they shop and studying their every move. He then sells this information to the stores so they can use it to improve their business. Should it be allowed for people like Underhill to observe customers as they shop? People could debate on this topic saying that customers need privacy, but what Underhill does is ethical, clients should be watched in stores even if it is without their knowledge because it would help both consumers and businesses. Being able to observe people’s behavior in stores and seeing what they are attracted to would help the store increase sales by putting those items at a reachable place for them to grab. It would also benefit consumers because costumer service would improve. Lastly, being able to study shopping behavior would be easy for stores to see patterns and trends.