Rhetorical Analysis Grading Grid: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Good, 3 = Average, 2 = Lacking, 1 = Very Poor

Transcription

1 Rhetorical Analysis Grading Grid: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Good, 3 = Average, 2 = Lacking, 1 = Very Poor 1 CRITERIA: COMMENTS: Intro Strategy ** ** Arguable, Focused Thesis $*** Evidence & Analysis $*** Structure, Org. & Argument Arc *** * Transitions *** * Conclusion $$** Quote Integration **** Great at times a few weak points though. Style & Voice **** Concision & Clarity ** ** Grammar & Mechanics *** * Work on em dash mechanics were you doing something with small fonts? Additional Comments:

2 2 NAME NAME Professor Vander Zee HONS 110 Academic Writing 24 September, 2013 Missing The Point on Millennials In the battle for any election, the fight for independent voters takes a high precedence. The media becomes intensely biased and employs winning rhetorical strategies in order to win over the crucial swing votes. In the pivotal days prior to the controversial presidential election of 2012, Zoe Carpenter attempts in her article, The Missing Millennials, to rally any still-undecided young voters. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :44 PM Comment [1]: What s a better way to put this? Through the piece written in The Nation, a liberal-leaning magazine, Carpenter focuses less on Obama's positive aspects and more on the Republican party's failure to cater to what she identifies as one of the largest voting groups: Millennials. Through drawn-out interviews and quotes from young people, she endeavors to let the voices of the Millennials speak for themselves, yet with a condescending tone she evokes a strong sense of guilt in young Democrats while simultaneously painting the Republican advocates as foolish and weak. Thus, while Carpenter communicates that young people today would rather focus politically on issues rather than candidates, she makes the mistake of using examples of politicians and their flaws for the majority of her article, which creates Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :45 PM Comment [2]: Are they drawn-out? acts 10/6/ :24 PM It is acts 10/6/ :24 PM t acts 10/6/ :24 PM that Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :46 PM Comment [3]: Yes, which suggest a certain above-the-fray element to her posturing. dissonance between her words and her message and leaves the plea substantially weaker than it would have been otherwise. As a member of the Millennial generation, Carpenter understands that the voice of an entire generation cannot be summed up by outsiders. Thus, she empowers their won words to speak for them by using a great deal of interviews and direct quotes from Millennials themselves, but in such a way to emotionally manipulate her readers. She uses the words of Gustavo, for example, a millennial who was greatly involved in the Obama campaign, to advocate for his political involvement. The words from acts 10/6/ :25 PM Comment [4]: Very clear thesis & solid intro Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :47 PM Comment [5]: This required some digging, I think feel free to introduce some new and relevant knowledge that you couldn t secure from the source alone. This is especially relevant in the intro and conclusion and when setting up moments of analysis. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :48 PM Comment [6]: New sentence here?

3 3 Gustavo evoke a deep sense of guilt: If I didn t do anything now and [Obama] were to lose, I would feel some sort of responsibility. Carpenter uses this as a guilt-inducing spearhead, which she rams into liberal-yet-undecided voters' hearts. Rather than an appeal to authority, Carpenter makes an appeal to those equal to the intended audience young, politically-minded voters--in order to establish a connection of trust between the readers and the Millennials in the article, and bring the guilt a little closer to home. She does not only use the words of young people to guilt readers who no longer idolize Obama into supporting her preferred candidate, but also uses a condescending description of Millennials who support those other than Obama to create a sense of repulsion and an associative embarrassment in her readers as well. John, described as having a hitch in his walk and his saucer-size eyes blinking rapidly, represents a millennial who is not an Obama supporter. Carpenter cruelly describes him as a fidgety twentysomething with a garbage bag tied origami-style on his head, and snidely points out that he is unemployed and has had trouble with the law in the past, effectually dismissing his political complaints. I don't want to be like that, she hopes her Millennial readers will say to themselves, and perhaps become a little closer to voting for Obama in the election. Using such patronizing descriptions she paints a ridiculous caricature not only of those who associate themselves with Republican values, but of Republican candidates as well. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :50 PM Comment [7]: The evidence here is nicely situated in the context of the article and is framed with some pre-summary. But could it be more fully contextualized? Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :49 PM Comment [8]: Note how the quote is set off with a colon: this suggests more connection than a period, which would also be grammatical. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :49 PM Comment [9]: Yes, but wouldn t a signal phrase at the end or in the middle (after lose perhaps) make this even stronger? Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :51 PM Comment [10]: Not sure what this means Comment [11]: Use a proper em dash here (I fixed it). Comment [12]: Excellent analysis in this paragraph. Comment [13]: Nice phrase! almost Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :53 PM Comment [14]: Sufficiently contextualized / set up?, with Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :52 PM Comment [15]: Italicize perhaps? Comment [16]: Nicely done!

4 4 The Republican campaign and its cast of hopefuls had serious flaws lack of unity behind a single leader, and a reputation of being both outdated and uninterested in the issues that Millennials were passionate about--and Carpenter strategically exacerbates them in her article. Encouraging a sense of party division, she identifies the split between Paulites and more traditional conservatives and makes Republicans appear even more divided when she quotes a young Republican as having only one hero Jesus. As for the political leaders themselves, with words she literally turns Reagan into a cardboard cutout and judges Romney to be a wax model, whose supporters show little more than tepid support. She makes it clear that although the Republican platform may have some good points, Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :54 PM of 2012 s Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :54 PM S Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :55 PM Comment [17]: Rushed quote integration? Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :55 PM Comment [18]: Lacking set-up? the men representing them are impersonal and fake clearly unfit for office and unworthy of the millennial vote. Furthermore, she attempts to employ a bandwagon technique by ridiculing and belittling their supporters: I asked more than a dozen young people in the crowd if they loved him back; not a single one said yes, she writes. This translates roughly to even steadfast Romneysupporters don't really like him, so you should not either! Carpenter leaves the Republican divided and undesirable to her audience of young voters. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :55 PM Comment [19]: Solid analysis? Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :56 PM Comment [20]: Hmm I m always suspicious of this word. Why? acts 10/6/ :29 PM Comment [21]: Great analysis / evidence / quote integration here. Well done! While the Millennials were essential in Obama's election in 2008, it appears as though that age group has not gathered behind the current president with such force this time. Carpenter argues that it is not apathy that keeps young voters away from the political world; rather, it is that no one candidate has Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :56 PM Comment [22]: Is this a good transition? What could make it better? demonstrated support for the issues that interest them. Near the end of her article, Carpenter lists issues that young people have deemed important: Inequality, debt, reproductive rights, the environment, gay rights and racial justice. Clearly, most of the issues listed are part of the Democratic platform. The only real reason she gives for why many Millennials are vying away from Obama is the debt crisis and the state of the economy, but undermines that with anecdotes from other young people describing the disastrous effects of poverty instead. Carpenter leads the argument with statistical

5 5 evidence that the percentage of Americans living in poverty is the highest it s been in the fifty three years that the Census Bureau has calculated the figure, and both acknowledges and dismisses the Republican claim to the importance of business with, It s risky to own a business now, OK but what s riskier than being poor? She sends the argument home with another guilt-inducing report about a family that cannot afford education or healthcare, and shames those who have a more conservative view on the economy: The poor will get poorer, she laments. It s not as sexy, we don t want to talk about welfare, but the fact of the matter is, it s about life and death. Despite Carpenter creating piece of work aimed effectively at Millennial voters, her article has one major defect: her attack on candidates of the Republican party is exactly what she says young people do not care about. Instead of going into the aforementioned issues such as gay rights or the environment, Carpenter both alienates any Republican-sympathetic readers and appears openly acts 10/6/ :31 PM Comment [23]: This is your weakest quote integration here Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :58 PM Comment [24]: There s another one of those words Comment [25]: I tried to fix this quote integration a bit with the line is not a very dynamic way of introducing a quote. with the line,. prejudiced by slanting her words to such a degree and haranguing them on their various perceived faults. In this case she does not follow her own advice and therefore loses the attention of her intended audience. Young voters were most likely, by this time, tired of hearing the mud-slinging and slandering going on during the entirety of the Presidential campaign (and before). Instead of offering a fresh new perspective on important issues, Carpenter slips into the cookie-cutter strategy of bashing one's opponents. Not until the very end of her article does she suggest a less-than perfect compromise of perhaps not agreeing with Obama completely, but voting for him anyways because of the issues that he acts 10/6/ :33 PM Comment [26]: Nice reflection on the issue of audience supports. The first half of the article is nearly completely target practice of unwary Republicans. The organizational structure works against her, as any middle-of-the-road reader would become tired of the partial digs and unfair caricatures and either become wary of the worth of the entire article or quit reading completely, before even coming to the more reasonable, if unsatisfactory end of the article. Although Carpenter's article is obviously biased and unfair to Republicans, perhaps her true purpose is achieved a purpose we can intuit by nothing the time the article was published: only days Thus, although her mainly through the time-frame in which it was O

6 before the election. Diplomacy and middle-ground are not priorities when an immediate conversion of 6 undecided voters is needed, though they might help get the true message through. However, in the face of all of her rhetoric, her argument loses the majority of its impact when considering that part of Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :01 PM. her argument that Millennials are not candidate-focused is pushed aside for her desire to condemn Republican candidates and to affirm the vote for Obama. If her audience had been already-decided, staunch liberal Democrats, it might not have mattered so much. However, with only days to spare, she may have lost a good number of undecided voters because of her overly-opinionated statements, shame-inducing guilt factors, and lack of concentration on important issues. In her final anecdote, she uses Phillips' words Will I vote for him? Of course I will as a solution to the immense guilt she had built up over the extent of the article, which, when one thinks about it, endorses an idolism and cult of personality which Carpenter seems to want to move beyond and even ridicules in regards to the opposite side of the political spectrum. When it comes to what Millennials are looking for, Zoe Carpenter can identify the issues but cannot put them into practice, much like a reflection of the entirety of the Presidential campaign.,. Anton Vander Zee 9/9/ :02 PM Comment [27]: Possible thesis material? Comment [28]: Nice!