Rhetorical Analysis Of The Empathy Diaries By Sherry Turkle

When a Chemist strives to prove their research, they have numbers and formulas to support their hypothesis. However, a social scientist, such as Sherry Turkle, must gather support for her conclusion through observations. But conveying observations alone is not enough to persuade an audience. When emotions are woven into one's experiences, the reader is able to immerse themselves into someone else’s perspective. Turkle identifies herself as someone who has “Spent [her] professional life as a student of conversation, trained as a sociologist, a teacher, and a clinical psychologist.”(Turkle 346) In her essay, The Empathy Diaries, Turkle explores the relationship that devices have on the decline of conversation. Yet, thousands of other teachers

Though she contrasts various age groups’ responses, she centers the majority of her writing on technology’s effect on youth. The ability for her to accurately contrast the behaviors of others depends on her credibility. Sherry Turkle relies on her Sociology and Psychology background in order to analyze the younger audience’s dependence on technology. She is then able to gather that conversation; which has decreased significantly in real life, faces a culprit of smart devices. Dr. Turkle supports this by her observations at a summer camp, which banned smart devices. The boys at the camp expressed deeper thought and appreciation for nature than they did with phones. (348) The effect that removing modern technology had on these young boys allowed Turkle to see that humans are still capable of empathy, technology is just inhibiting it. She states “In my own research at a device-free summer camp, I hear what this resiliency sounds like.”(348) Turkle emphasizes the direct link between her research and the conclusion she was able to reach from it. With the ethos her detailed observations provide, the audience knows Turkle is qualified to argue for technology’s negative effect on