“Why the US has a culture of dependency” talks of
how Americans have become more and more dependent on government aided programs.
Mathew Spalding’s deliberate choice of diction, syntax, imagery, and detail
effectively emphasizes his ideas by
rhetorically causing the reader to take on his own opinion.
rhetorically causing the reader to take on his own opinion.
Spalding’s clever use of syntax in his title “Why the U.S. has a culture of dependency” causes the reader to assume that there is a culture of dependency when in reality it is just an opinion of Spalding’s. If Spalding had worded it “Does the U.S. have a culture of dependency?” then the reader would know that this is an opinion article, but Spalding’s statement title gives it an aura of a report, which would be based on fact rather than on the author’s opinion,to gain the audience’s trust. Spalding also exercises syntax in his favor of his opinion when explaining how citizens create a lot of debt for America. He says, “They will crowd out virtually all other government spending, including national defense.” Spalding’s syntactical choice to position “national defense” at the end of his sentence places more weight and emphasis upon this idea, allowing the reader more time to dwell upon this thought. His intension is to appall readers with the idea that the government spends more on welfare programs than on protecting the country. If Spalding had said, “They will crowd out national defense and all other government spending,” the reader would have passed over the detail on their way to the sentence’s finish and therefore would have not thought much about cutting spending specifically on national defense. Spalding’s careful syntax excludes other opinions by making his own appear as fact and creates a sense of urgency with regards to certain details.
Within the first paragraph, Spalding alludes to the “Pony Express” when talking how “the days have gone when people would only get mail service from the federal government.” When readers approach this allusion, they think of an outdated mail service that existed during the civil war. By using this historical reference point, Spalding attaches the idea of a culture of independence to the Pony Express, forcing readers to assume that it no longer exists as a relevant part of American culture. In addition, Spalding uses imagery when he says, “Under a culture of dependency, poverty becomes a trap and recipients get stuck.” This tacks a simplistic and very negative image to a very complex problem and disregards any positive results of such programs, causing the reader to equate government welfare programs with a trap. When talking of welfare programs, Spalding refers to them as a “confusing alphabet soup of programs”, this reference to a well known and often used phrase immediately grabs the readers attention and makes them believe that the government is doing a poor job of organizing these programs, when in reality this may not be true. Spalding’s choice of very simple but negative imagery convinces readers of his ideas that many not necessarily be true.
Spalding consistently uses statistics as details to convey that his ideas are accurate and unquestionably true. For example, in one paragraph Spalding says:
…49% of the population lives in a household…67.3
million Americans received either Temporary Assistance for Needy Families…responsibility
of individuals, neighborhoods, churches and other civil society institutions
has an 8% increase from the year before.
With so many numbers in front of them, readers are
lead to believe that his opinion must be correct because how can one refute the
truth of a statistic? Often, statistics are stretched out of proportion and do
not accurately represent the population or the topic at hand, but this is never
stated in the opinion article so readers do not have any other information to
temper Spalding’s choice in detail.
Even beginning with the very title of his article,
Spalding immediately directs the reader’s thoughts towards his own ideas by
employing careful diction, subtle syntax, simple images, and many statistics,
successfully making he article appear more fact than opinion.
Link to Article: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/spalding-welfare-state-dependency/index.html
Link to Article: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/spalding-welfare-state-dependency/index.html
Your analysis of this article had a lot of very strong points in it. However, one of the weak points I found was the imagery. I do agree that the sentence gives off some kind of negative feel, however it didn't really feel like strong imagery like we have seen in other pieces. For diction however, I completely agree that if he had phrased it like you said, "Does the U.S. have a culture of dependency?" then more people would have thought that this was an opinion article. I think that more people were intrigued to read the article because of the title and how it sounds so serious. I also liked how you spotted the emphasis that was put on "national defense" in one of the sentences. It really does make the whole thing sound a lot more serious, and it maybe even exaggerates it a little bit.
ReplyDeleteHi Saloni! First off, I felt that your paragraph on syntax was very strong--the way you framed your arguments around specific examples of alternative sentences was successful in grounding your point. You used a similar example in your paragraph about diction, but I felt that this paragraph was not as strong, for reasons similar to Mehar's, and for some of my own. The first problem, the simplest, is that in this paragraph you discuss the grammatical structure of the title, rather than the connotations or elevation of the words. This makes me think that you really mean to talk about the syntax of the title, because you suggest that if Spalding structure the grammar in a different way, it would change the tone of the article. This is syntax, not diction. Mehar said that "it sounded so serious" and this would be an alternative motive behind Spalding's structure. While I think she is right, I think you should go a little further in your reasoning to solidify your point for the reader. You say that Spalding wants it to sound like a report, and not an opinion. Mehar says that Spalding might want it to sound more serious. Perhaps you could combine those ideas into a more specific explanation of Spalding's syntax choices: that he worded it this way so as to lend credibility to his article. This goes a step beyond stating that he wants it to sound like a report instead of an opinion in giving a reason for why he would want it to be seen as a report: because reports are taken more seriously than opinions. This small step would make a much bigger impact on your reader. As a last note, I think your diction in the concluding sentence gives off a negative connotation with words like "heavy-handed" and "simplistic" to describe Spalding's rhetorical devices. I would reword using adjectives with more positive connotations so that this final sentence would agree with your main claim: that Spalding was successful in his use of literary techniques.
ReplyDeleteI really like how in the syntax paragraph you provided an example demonstrating how the quoted sentence from the article could easily be written with a different syntax. By doing this, you clearly indicate that the writer made a conscious decision to emphasize the exclusion of national defense. That was an excellent way to add a warrant for your evidence.
ReplyDeleteJust like Michaela said, you should be careful about what you define as diction. Diction is the kinds of meanings that individual words carry. Your analysis did a great job of explaining how the article title makes its message stronger by making an assumption. Just make sure that you label that as an example of syntax, rather than diction.