Fluent Essays

You may have at some point in your life heard the word rhetoric used in the world of politics. Usually, when the word is used in terms of politics it has a negative connotation (a meaning more specific than its denotative meaning). Someone might say, I dont believe anything this president says. Its all just rhetoric. By this, they mean the politicians words are an attempt to disguise the actual meaning or that there is no real meaning at all. However, the denotativemeaning of rhetoric is: the art of persuasive speaking or writing. In other words, it is the craft that goes into communication, whether that is persuading your friend to go out to the club, persuading your boss to give you a raise, or persuading your reader that the central argument of your essay is valid.It is important as a developing writer to understand the techniques of academic writing (rhetorical devices) so that you can employ them effectively in order to prove the arguments you will make in your essays (and get a good grade). One of the best ways to continually learn the effective use of these techniques is to identify their use by published authors in the material you are asked to read for class. At the same time, you will not only be learning how to use rhetorical devices, you will also be better able to analyze the content of the work itself and evaluateits validity.Here are some important areas to consider when analyzing an authors rhetoric (we will discuss more techniques as the semester progresses):Tone: a)The mood of a piece established by the author; b) The attitude of an author toward a given subject. When discussing an authors tone, be as specific as possible with the words you use. For example, to say a tone is angry is not as specific as saying it is frustrated or bitter. In other words, what kind of angry is it?Here is a link to a list of words you can use to describe a writers tone (or feel free to search for others online): Words to Describe a Writers Tone (Links to an external site.)Diction: a)Word Choice - what specific words does the author use to create analogies, make subtle connections, or offer imagery? Take this line from the Gladwell piece: The practice of prying into the minds and habits of American consumers is now a multi-billion dollar business (94). The word prying has a connotation of doing something bad, like a criminal using a crowbar to pry into a locked door. This word adds more meaning to the sentence rather than just saying look into. b)Overall Language - does the language in the piece seem Formal(complex vocabulary, grammatically and syntactically correct according Standard Academic English)? Or does the language seem Conversational (using language that is common in everyday conversation)? Or does the language seem to employ Slang (very informal language that is usually only understood by a specific group of people).Write two paragraphs (one on tone and one on diction) analyzing Steve McKevitts use of rhetoric in Everything Now (123). Use multiple examples to support what you say about the authors use of tone and diction in their separate paragraphs. Be sure to explain what you think the effect of the authors use of tone and diction is after giving examples. eng_101_p123_everything_now.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Signs of Life in the USA STEVE McKEVITT Everything Now Paradoxically, although today people in developed societies have more consumer choices, 24/7 access to a global cornucopia of goods, and (thanks to generous credit availability) more sheer stuff, many report feelings of unhappiness, especially when it comes to the stress triggered by working to pay for all that stuff. But while work indeed contributes to that unhappiness, Steve McKevitt argues in this selection that much of it can be credited to massive marketing campaigns designed to convince us that if we only buy this product or that service, we will be happy. Combining psychology with the technological ability to bombard us around the clock with clever advertisements designed to convince us that our every want is actually a need, current marketing strategies keep us unhappy in order to move the goods. A marketing consultant and author of the book Everything Now (2013, from where this selection comes), McKevitt is working on a PhD at the University of Sheffield. You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. — ERIC HOFFER, philosopher and social writer What do you want? Whether you are looking for motor cars, mobile phones, holidays or simply what to have for lunch, the range of options available to you can be genuinely overwhelming. With nothing more than a broadband Internet connection, you can enjoy immediate and unfettered access to millions of books, newspapers and magazines; thousands of movies and TV shows and almost the entire canon of recorded music. Many lifetimes’ worth of content, all of it available at the click of a mouse. Whatever it is you want, you can have it. Everything Now. We are living through a time of endless choices and unlimited convenience. We now take for granted the ubiquity of goods and services that can be instantly accessed, but the 24/7 society we live in — where everything is available practically all the time — is a recent achievement. Everything Now did not happen by chance or overnight. It is the culmination of a deliberate and concerted 30-year drive to increase choice and convenience for everyone. Those of us lucky enough to be living in the developed world today are, on average, healthier, wealthier, longer lived and better educated than at any other point in history. Our needs have been fulfilled and so, for the first time ever, we have an economy that is almost entirely devoted to the business of satisfying our wants instead. The question is: with so much effort dedicated to giving us what we want, why aren’t we happier or, at the very least, worrying less and enjoying life more? . . . People do not buy technology, what they buy is functionality. Consumers do not purchase stereos, DVD players and mobile phones because they want the items for themselves, but because they want to listen to music, watch movies, and keep in touch with family and friends. The same is true of computers. But in this case there is much more functionality, so people end up buying computers for many different reasons — to work, play games, browse the Internet, edit movies, create magazines and so on. To do this they need to run software. To gain a competitive edge within a crowded market, software publishers were creating products crammed with features and optimised to run most effectively on the fastest machines available at the time of their release. This was especially true for computer games, which, because of their rich graphics, placed the heaviest demands upon the hardware. If consumers wanted to derive the most functionality from the latest software — in the case of my games, experience the smoothest animation, highest resolution, and most spectacular visuals — they would need the fastest computer, which would almost certainly contain one of [Intel’s] microprocessors. However, as Intel’s business model demonstrated, it would only be the fastest computer for a maximum of three months. The pace of this process was so rapid that [Intel VP of Marketing] Manfred could be confident that even the best computer available today would not be able to cope with the latest software being published three years hence. The pursuit of functionality — our games — could be used to force consumers to invest in Intel’s new technology. Intel was not only creating faster microprocessors, it was also creating the demand for them. Intel may be a master of the art, but it is certainly not the only company in the business of inventing wants as well as products. Manfred is correct: wants are very different to needs. “Want versus Need” is one of the most basic concepts in economics. A need is something we have to have — like food, sleep or water. A want is something we would like to have — like a Big Mac, a Tempur mattress or a bottle of Evian. You might think that you cannot survive without your BlackBerry or your BMW, but you can. It might even be the case that you do need a phone to carry out your work and a car to get around in, but what brand it is and, to a large extent, what features it has are really just wants. Needs are rational and permanent. We have always needed — and will always need — food, water and shelter. The solution may change, but the problem is always the same, you can’t create new needs. Wants, on the other hand, are emotional, ephemeral and ever changing. Just because you want something today doesn’t mean you will want it tomorrow, always want it, or ever want it again. For example, back in 1981, everybody wanted a Rubik’s Cube, it was the world’s most popular toy, but it is unlikely to ever repeat this feat in the future. This transience creates an opportunity for anyone who is trying to sell us something — whether that’s a product, a service or even an idea — and they can invent wants for us as well as the means to assuage them. In 1976, a year with one of the hottest summers on record, almost nobody drank bottled water in the UK (unless they went on holiday “abroad”); we spent less than £200,000 on just 3 million litres of the stuff. Today, each of us drinks an average of 33 litres per year, spending a total of £1.4 billion. We do this despite the fact that tap water is essentially an identical product that is as widely and freely available as it was in 1976. Manufacturing wants for things like bottled water is what keeps us in a permanent state of dissatisfaction, because only by making us unhappy with what we have today is it possible to persuade us to pay for something that will make us happy tomorrow. In the case of bottled water, its success depended on us becoming dissatisfied with drinking tap water. The basis of this dissatisfaction is usually emotional rather than rational, it doesn’t require hard evidence — all that is needed, perhaps, is promoting a notion that bottled water tastes better or using language to suggest it is somehow healthier than tap water. In Intel’s case, the continual introduction of new microprocessors means that purchasing a new computer will only briefly appease the existing want for maximum functionality. Likewise, once upon a time, you may have yearned for an iPhone Mk1, but now, several upgrades later with that model nothing more than a distant memory, you’ve become dissatisfied with your current handset, and can’t wait for the opportunity to forsake it for next year’s version. It is simple and, as ever-increasing sales of bottled water, personal computers and mobile phones testifies, it has been extremely effective. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory of developmental psychology which describes the phases of human growth. It is often portrayed as a pyramid, with the biggest, most basic needs at the bottom (air, food, water), then safety issues (health, employment, property), moving up through relationships and esteem (achievement, confidence, respect), reaching self-actualisation at the top (morality, creativity and problem solving). Maslow believed that these needs play a major role in motivating behaviours in Western societies where the individual is paramount. Basic biological, physiological and safety needs will always take priority over the need for respect or self-expression, but once they have been satisfied, the needs higher up the pyramid become increasingly important. As one set of needs is assuaged, focus moves to those on the next level up the pyramid. Everything Now is an extreme example of an individualistic society, hence our tendency is to be egocentric, focusing on the improvement of one’s self and circumstances, with selfactualisation at the zenith. For example, tackling obesity and associated issues of low self-esteem is a priority in the UK and USA, where food is cheap and plentiful, but in places where food is expensive and in short supply, these problems simply don’t exist. There are few branches of Weight Watchers in the Third World and no need, at present, for Western governments to develop famine-relief strategies to feed their own people. . . . Yes we are still innovating, but we are doing so in small steps, not the giant leaps we once were. [John] Smart makes a very interesting observation about the areas in which innovation is taking place: Certain types of innovation saturation might now appear to be occurring because our accelerating technological productivity is beginning to intersect with an effectively fixed number of human needs . . . We may observe that as the world develops and we all climb higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of relatively fixed needs, those who already have sufficient housing, transportation, etc., are now pursuing innovations on the most abstract, virtual, and difficult-to-quantify levels, like social interaction, status, entertainment, and self-esteem. Figure 1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs It is because we don’t really need anything anymore that the focus of innovation has itself turned to addressing our wants instead. As Maslow demonstrates, once needs are taken care of, wants can be just as powerful drivers. This is all well and good if we know what it is that we want, but most of the time we don’t. Nor do the things we want necessarily have to be good, either for ourselves or for the rest of society. Some people want to smoke, to take drugs or, as a more extreme example, to commit crimes. Needs require rational decision-making. However, the evidence is that decisions about wants are driven entirely by our emotions and these feelings can be so strong that they cause us to overrule or simply ignore rational objections. This combination makes us highly suggestible: easily persuaded by things that engage our sympathies, willing to be told what it is that we want, and then to act upon that information, regardless of the consequences. We should also consider that the people empathising with us — the ones engaging our sympathies and then telling us what it is that we want — are often trying to hawk us a solution as well. You can find examples of this everywhere. Just look at an everyday product, like toothpaste. We need toothpaste to ensure our teeth and gums remain healthy. On average, people with healthy teeth live longer and tend to lead healthier lives than those who lose their teeth prematurely. Visit your local supermarket and you’ll find around 120 different brands of toothpaste to choose from. Some promise fresher breath, others whiter teeth, others healthier gums. There will be brands for sensitive teeth, for people with fillings or cavities, there will be gels, pastes and powders, but despite this welter of options, each and every one will be virtually identical chemically; essentially the same thing, packaged and positioned in dozens of slightly different ways. The same is true whatever the category, from soap to soap operas. Scratch beneath the surface of Everything Now’s apparently endless choice at any point and what you will find is hundreds of virtually identical products. Toothpaste is really just toothpaste. Nobody needs to have 120 different varieties of intrinsically indistinguishable products like toothpaste or soap to choose from, and you may argue that nobody wants them either, but these “choices” are offered in a much more subtle way. Where once there was a category called soap, now there are soaps for dry skin, greasy skin, sensitive skin; there is strong soap, gentle soap; soap in a bar, in a bottle, in a jar or from a dispenser; liquid soap, foam soap, hard soap, scented soap, simple soap, plain soap, soft soap and soap on a rope. Now all you have to do is choose one. Things can’t go on like this. And that’s not some liberal cri de coeur, I mean it literally: they can’t. Whatever your views are on climate change, you have to at least concede that we are not going to be able to rely on fossil fuels forever. If we carry on at the current rate of consumption — some 85 million barrels of oil a day, burning through the fossil record at the rate of 20 million years, every year — then we’re going to run out sooner rather than later. Well, I’m all for screwing in low-energy light bulbs, buying locally produced peas and only drinking European wine, if that’s what it takes to save the planet, yet I can’t help thinking that, in the face of the thousands of freight carriers that are making their way to these shores slowly, but inexorably, from China and India to deliver their precious cargoes of Christmas cracker gifts and trinkets, these Herculean efforts might not suffice! And even if we do discover substantial new reserves of oil and gas to ensure we can be supplied with miniature screwdriver sets and mini playing cards for the next 200 years, there still aren’t enough resources for everyone to live as wastefully as we do in the developed world. We are currently using 1.5 times the world’s gross annual product every year, which requires us to draw on an inevitably limited and dwindling stockpile of natural resources to make up the shortfall. But even as we burn through 50 percent more than we produce, over-fishing, over-farming, over-watering and deforesting as we go, competition for these diminishing resources is increasing as the huge economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC nations) and those in the rest of Southern Asia and South America become stronger. This means that even if those miniature screwdriver sets are still available, they’re going to be a lot more expensive. And I do mean a lot more. Economists expect food prices to double in the next 20 years in real terms. Remember, this is the case even if we ignore climate change, which, I’ll concede, is a bit like ignoring a herd of elephants in your living room. . . . The world we live in today no longer needs either stone knappers or rocket-scientists. It requires people to work out how the music industry can make money from file sharing; how Sunday newspaper executives can convince new readers that 500,000 words of content is worth the price of a cup of coffee; how TV channels can survive without relying on advertising revenue. It needs marketers and creative thinkers who can persuade millions of other people that This Brand is exclusively for them, that the next version of this film/TV/video game franchise is really the best one ever, or that some website helps us get closer to the things we love. It needs people who can develop products that are slightly better than the previous version, who can identify tiny gaps in crowded markets, who can think up new ways to package, deliver or sell the same things. It needs people who can find innovative ways of managing finance, who can manipulate the money markets, exploit political boundaries and economic loopholes, who can persuade people to leverage their assets, or to liquidate, re-mortgage, plough-back or reinvest, or just to keep their capital moving. But most of all it needs people who can work out ways of getting all of the above to us as soon as we want it. And of course, we want it now. Inventors are innovating as much now as they ever have, it’s just that they are solving problems that won’t necessarily be rewarded with patents. The inventors are busy doing other things. Not necessarily brilliant things either. For every iPad there is a Chicken Nugget — but both are, in their own way, elegant solutions to problems people didn’t know that they had. Everything Now is enormously wasteful: a huge and unnecessary drain on the world’s dwindling natural resources. By skewing our motivation it has entirely displaced the process of innovation. This is the real cost of changing our focus to wants instead of needs. Everything Now is making it almost impossible for us to address any genuinely big problems we face in the long term. We are not just demand-led, but are busily creating the demands themselves. We have become so obsessed with inventing and meeting the wants of the individual in the short term that attention has become diverted from the real challenges of meeting fundamental human needs of the future: energy and food supply, changing climate, population growth and the sustainable use of natural resources. SOURCES Bott, David (Director of Innovation Programmes, UK Government Technology Strategy Board), “Challenge = Opportunity” The 9th Roberts Lecture, University of Sheffield, 18 October 2011. Davies, John, “Debt Facts and Figures July 2011,” Credit Action, July 2011. Purdy, L., “The Dissatisfaction Syndrome,” Publicis, May 2002. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment