Rhetorical Analysis Of Civilian By Tobias Wolff: Summary

In Hearst’s papers he showed the Cuban Rebels as noble patriots, though many of them had resorted to acts of terrorism. Due to these exaggerated portraits of the Cuban people Americans were hungry for war. Another key reason for wanting war came from a letter that the Spanish Foreign Minister, Dupuy de Lome, had written to his friend in Cuba. In the letter Lome had said the President Mckinley was a “low, coarse politician.” This letter was somehow stolen and published in the New York Journal. Americans to acute offense to this and again asked for war.

In concrete the language of the Smiths and Martins is indeed old fashioned and dry adding slogans and a lot of simple expressions. The more the couple continues to talk to each other, the less they communicate with the result that the language disappears itself: that means that mechanical phrases return into senseless sentences and finally lead to meaningless words together with pronounced chaotic sounds. At the end, the characters getting totaly frustrated being unable to communicate due to the very reduced and primitive level of their used vocabulary rather than simply chatter or permit a stylistic and sophisticated language style combined with the typical grammer of the English language. Ionesco therefore provoked the audiance to become aware of the tragedy of human communication. Ionesco illustrates this mess of

Wilson’s use of satire and other rhetorical devices effectively exposes the immature nature of the arguments between these two groups as well as demonstrate how counterproductive they can be. Wilson’s format is the first striking thing the reader notices. Both passages have the same general structure: They both begin by discrediting the other group, they both claim their group is entirely irreproachable, and they conclude by briefly establishing their own goals and ideas. This not only proves how similar the strategies are, but also establishes the immature and ineffective nature of these arguments. In addition, Wilson skillfully manufactures each group’s statements regarding their plans to seem ill-considered.

“Biff, after he has discovered his identity, is able to speak forcibly and in simple language which round like everyday speech, though it is of course, full of the devices of rhetoric. It is interesting moving speech, his emotion is dumb, and so is Willy’s response. “Happy and Howard need only a superficial language because they are using speech as a sort of provocative shell. Charley also is keeping emotion at arm’s length, but he expresses himself with a crisp, wise-cracking force. ‘Can’t we do something about the walls?’ he asks.

As has just become obvious figurative expressions are problematic, and not just for non-English speakers. George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language": “By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save mental effort at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.” Orwell probably didn’t have the term “booty call” in mind, but his argument that idioms and cliché expressions mix “vagueness and sheer incompetence” holds true. Orwell argued that politicians are the worst abusers of figurative speech. They take the

Some, like Anzaldúa, view this effect as forceful and a form of cultural terrorism. Others, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, author of “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” Richard Rodriguez, author of “Aria,” view the change with more passive resignation – after all, it is no individual’s responsibility to challenge centuries of erasure by

Neglect to do so and be tortured by the government. INGSOC uses Newspeak as a tool to enforce order and obedience as the oppression of language is essentially the oppression of thought. George Orwell exemplifies the importance of language in his novel, by constructed a world in which language and self-expression are extremely limited and writing of the less than pleasant result. Before elaborating on the effects Newspeak has on Oceania, it must be first be established that Newspeak sole purpose is to corrupt thought. Conventional languages often grow and become more broad with time, however, Newspeak

In “The Decay of Lying,” Vivian would identify with this movement based on his opinions of modernism and logic. Vivian explains to Cyril that “as a method Realism is a complete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject matter.” Wilde is, of course, speaking his own opinion through Vivian and develops his ideas throughout the Socratic dialogue. This line spoken by Vivian underscores the contrast in subject matter “The Decay of Lying” to the social norms. The essay attacks the accepted intellectual ideas of the time and hints toward homosexuality (although the term was not yet

You always say that. I know.” (McCarthy 192). This passage supports the lack of punctuation by demonstrating the absence of commas, which makes the sentence longer. He doesn’t include the apostrophe in “don’t”, and eliminates quotation marks when dialogue’s involved. This passage also supports

The verbal ambiguity of “waving”, misinterpretable as a “sign of greeting or farewell” instead of a call for help (“wave” OED), acknowledges the social environment’s problems to decode the speaker’s signals and his difficulty to communicate. However, this sympathy for the speaker’s lack of communicative skills is undermined by the structural ambiguity of “not waving”, which suggests that the protagonist’s signals are not just difficult to interpret but that he might be “not waving” and thus not signaling his need for help at all. The credibility of the dead man is further affected by the grammatical ambiguity of “still” (Smith 2), which not only points to the persistence of the his lamenting but also implies that he is captured in motionless passivity and tacit suffering instead of seeking support. “Larking” (Smith 5) also points to a paradigm of dishonesty and deception since it cannot only refer to playing around but also to playing mean tricks on others (“lark” OED). Smith’s specific diction thus points to a certain “meanness of [the dead man’s] character […] that perpetuates [his] laments of neediness, confusion, and alienation” (Civello 43).