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Rhetorical Analysis

Publication, Audience and Purpose

Arianna Huffington’s Pursuit of Happiness, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Unexceptionalism, and Eric Schlosser’s The Freak Show all center on appraising the American nation with regard to various issues. The articles are documented in the 2007 The Atlantic, a special issue marking the publication’s 150^th Anniversary. The Atlantic is actually a monthly journal whose main audience comprises of individuals that are highly knowledgeable and quite educated; readers who lean vastly on other informative publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Harpers, amongst others of a related genre. The publication takes an unbiased and mid-perspective on politics, thereby offering liberal and conformist viewpoints on the subjects discussed.

The periodical comprises of close to fifty writers who are described as outstanding intellectuals, theologians, professors, philosophers, or politicians; for instance the well renowned Miss Manners. By utilizing such writers, the periodical has created and offered reliability and credibility in this anniversary edition to the given reader. Additionally, due to the fact that the periodical has been present for one hundred and fifty years, it contains credibility in terms of maturity within the writing industry. This creates a type of appeal to the readers based on the argument that unless the publication is trustworthy, then it would have failed in its endurance within the industry.

Evidence, Reasoning and Communication Strategy

Arianna Huffington is a prominent writer and co-creator of The Huffington Post (Huffington 44). Her views are conservative in nature. Huffington’s writing proficiency is recognized by acclaimed publications such as Forbes and The Guardian. Anne-Marie Slaughter is currently based in Princeton University as a politics lecturer (Slaughter 50). Slaughter is an outstanding intellectual as noted in the 2010 Global Thinkers ranking system created by the Foreign Policy periodical. Her views are quite credible and therefore appear on known newscasts like BBC and CNN amongst others. Slaughter is also a known political critic as noted in newspaper publications.

Eric Schlosser is an outstanding journalist and writer, having won the 1994 National Magazine Award and the 1995 Sidney Hillman Foundation honor for excellent investigations and analysis in writing. Schlosser has published three of his own books with the most known being the 2000 Fast Food Nation; he as worked with newspapers like New York Times, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker amongst others (Schlosser 48). The writers have therefore created substantial credibility within the writing profession through their remarkable achievements and intellectual capabilities, transferring the same to their articles. The articles employ subjective reflection and interpretations as evidence of the identified trends and societal changes presently noted in America and therefore quite biased to the writers’ perceptions and views.

Bias is clearly noted in Schlosser’s article in the assertion that “my idea of America was formed by stories…that my grandfather told me” (46). Huffington and Slaughter have steered from personal bias by offering their observations form a third-person outlook. The assumptions given in accordance to changing trends in America by looking at the present and the past are true and therefore I agree with the given views. Reflections and interpretations are achieved through comparisons to a specific element like happiness or satisfaction as noted currently, opposed to how the same was achieved in the past before the independence period.

The reasoning therefore given through the premise structuring is rather linear; identifying the past and the present for possible similarities or disparities, followed by a succinct standpoint as the conclusion (Huffington 44). The communication approach used in the articles is persuasive writing with the content first offering an appraisal on a given situation and the most excellent way of dealing with the given problem. The writers incorporate various examples and logic in their articles, especially in the formation of premises for audience persuasion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Huffington, Arianna. “Pursuit of Happiness”. The Atlantic, November 2007: 44. Print.

Schlosser, Eric. “The Freak Show”. The Atlantic, November 2007: 46-48. Print.

Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Unexceptionalism”. The Atlantic, November 2007: 48-50. Print.