"Mark Beeman has a tense smile, a receding hairline, and the wiry build of a long-distance runner. He qualified for the Olympic trials in 1988 and 1992 with a time of 3:41 in the fifteen-hundred-meter race, although he gave up competitive running after, as he puts it, 'everything below the hips started to fall apart.' He now subsists on long walks and the manic tapping of feet. When Beeman gets excited about something- whether it's the cellular properties of pyramidal neurons or his new treadmill- the pace of his speech accelerates and then he starts to draw pictures on whatever scratch paper is nearby."
In my reading, this passage in particular stuck out. It is loaded with rhetorical appeals and devices that would catch the attention of almost any reader. To begin, the very first sentence creates such a vivid visual of Mark Beeman, the man who is being describe. This image of the man is targeting the emotional appeals of the reader. In other words, pathos is being used. Not much farther into the passage, the author adds another rhetorical device by inserting the quote, "everything below the hips started to fall apart." Obviously, this man's legs were not literally falling apart. This is a hyperbole exaggerating his problem as a result of his competitive running. Additonally, in the very next sentence, the author changes the tone for a moment to emphasize the dramatic change in Beeman's life after giving up on competitive running. Finally, in the last sentence, the author once again attracts the reader with rhetoric appeals. The way he used two examples which may excite Beeman that were on two completely opposite sides of a spectrum accentuates the final point he is trying to make.
Imagine uses passages loaded with rhetorical appeals such as this one often and to help make an argument. Using rhetorical appeals helps persuade the reader and go along with what the author is claiming. The author argues for creative minds and the science behind them. He uses research and other people's experience to affirm his claims along with rhetorical devices to convince his audience of the legitimacy of his work.
"He uses research and other people's experience to affirm his claims along with rhetorical devices to convince his audience of the legitimacy of his work."
ReplyDeleteIf this is true, then how do you respond to the challenges that Lehrer has received on this book in particular? How does this passage fit in, or not fit in, with those challenges?
What kind of argument would a writer plagiarize information to make?