“Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” by Clive Thompson

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In an article titled “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy,” journalist Clive Thompson reviews Andrea Lunsford’s five-year study of changing writing and literacy norms of students, as well as newly-formed texting culture. The author describes youth attitudes to modern writing and concludes that with the development of technology, a cultural paradigm of writing has shifted from the text quality to appeal to the audience. To present his point of view and convince readers of it, Thompson uses several classic rhetorical strategies such as deductive reasoning, the appeal to authority, descriptions, and emotion-laden words and phrases.

Readers can trace the rhetorical technique of deductive reasoning both in separate paragraphs and throughout the whole “the New Literacy” article. The essence of this method is that the literary structure of constructing the argument begins with general and abstract terms and theses and ends with narrower and more specific concepts and conclusions. Reasoning in the framework of the text, the readers notice a subsequent transition of the argument from “kids today can’t write” and “age of illiteracy” to “literacy revolution” and “write for an audience” (Thompson).

The author appeals to broad stereotypes like “bleak, bald, sad shorthand,” which are familiar to the audience and further focuses on the core of the phenomenon, namely “online media are pushing literacy,” for understanding (Thompson). The competent application of this strategy is clearly visible even in the first paragraph, whose purpose is clearly to parody and ridicule the opinions of conservative literary skeptics about youth literacy. For an evidence basis, Thompson uses data from the linguistic study and the researcher’s opinion. The persuasive effect of deductive reasoning is reinforced by the frequent use of the appeal to authority to build an evidence basis.

Clive Thompson refers to authority through a number of direct in-text quotes, paraphrases, statistics, and other parameters and the results of Andrea Lansford’s research. The author presents this rhetorical tactic in the form of quoting credible specialists and materials, as well as providing excerpts or whole statistics to convince a more sophisticated and skeptical reader. For example, according to Thompson, “Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it.” The effectiveness of this rhetorical strategy is due to the fact that modern readers are accustomed to trusting the information provided only if there is scientifically proven data.

However, in order to develop understanding and further conviction in the author’s argument, it is not enough to give figures and expert opinions. Another aspect of rhetoric is the creation of mental images. That is why in the second half of the article, Thompson describes what younger generation literacy, writing, and texting culture and rules looks likes, also resorting to comparisons with ideas that are familiar to the audience.

The author explains the new writing paradigm by describing the structure of Lunsford’s study, modern prose, text messages, and statuses as well as students’ motivation toward academic writing. Writers use a descriptive strategy to provide an illustrative example of the phenomenon under discussion, since formal and scientific terms may not be apparent to some categories of readers. Through familiar words, the authors draw in the readers’ heads a clear picture of what argument they want to convince the audience. Also, Thompson describes the negative attitude of individual representatives of the older generation towards new literacy and creates parallels between Ancient Greek and Japanese letter building rules and modern writing culture (Thompson).

Specifically, in this article, such a method is aimed at creating an understanding effect in the older representatives of the audience, as they are less involved in the Internet and general digital technology culture. Clive Thompson is not afraid to communicate with the audience through informal words and expressions. Emotion-laden words and phrases are another technique that was identified during the rhetorical analysis of the “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy.”

Clive Thompson’s article is emotionally colored with words and phrases such as “pundits,” “cool,” “moaned,” direct in-text quotes from John Sutherland’s speech, and overall the entire first paragraph. The use of such words is explained by the fact that for successful argumentation, the author needs to interest readers and provoke the strongest internal response as soon as possible. Through the first paragraph, Thompson simultaneously arouses a feeling of discontent among the young audience and a possible effect of solidarity among older readers (Thompson). From the opening lines, it interests different representatives of the audience.

Then, using the emotional contrast between the beginning and the rest of the article, the writer retains the attention and presents his argument. Also, the words mentioned above make it possible to facilitate the general tone of the article and do not allow it to be overloaded with scientific terminology and statistics. Such skillful mastery of all four rhetoric techniques not only readily explains the phenomenon under discussion, but also effectively convinces readers of the author’s point of view.

It is worth noting that a similar rhetorical strategy is “compare/contrast-show good/bad to change the way a person sees A or B” may be identified there. However, it was the pathos category that was chosen because when constructing contrast, it is possible to avoid informal and emotionally colored words. The decisive factor in this matter was the obvious teasing question at the end of the first paragraph. Nevertheless, it is exciting and informative to observe how Clive Thompson using pathos strategies also, most likely very consciously, simultaneously applies logos techniques.

This work analyzed how Clive Thompson uses several rhetorical strategies to argue his perspective. The main strengths of the article are well-grounded consistent deductive reasoning within the paragraphs and, in general, and a competent appeal to the authorities, in particular to the data of Andrea Lansford’s study. It is also worth noting the detailed, vivid, and conceptual descriptions and the relevant application and emotion-laden words and phrases.

Possible disadvantages include the small use of emotionally colored words in the middle and end of the article. Thompson also skillfully balances between academic and non-academic writing, competently combining research results with words such as “cool” and “pundits.” In general, the argumentation is consistent and does not contradict itself. The author uses rhetorical techniques correctly, and cites a reliable source as evidence; all this speaks of the effectual persuasiveness of Thompson’s argument.

Of most significant interest is how the author simultaneously addresses different age groups through descriptions and that deductive reasoning is used to antagonize the beginning and end of the article. Such an example of the implementation of rhetorical strategies may be useful in the study of argumentative and persuasive methodologies.

References

Thompson, Clive. “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy.” Wired. 2009. Web.

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“Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” by Clive Thompson

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