Rhetorical analysis

Text:

Happy Blue Year

Section: WHILE YOU WERE OUT

I wanted to love my cute little wireless earpiece. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror

DEC. 25 -I GOT WHAT I WANTED! A brand-new Bluetooth headset! Wow, it's tiny. A little swanky gizmo with a dingus that goes behind my ear and a piece that fits into it and a tiny wedge of plastic that sits near my jaw, blinking. Except, you know, it isn't blinking. It's just sitting there. Turns out I've got to charge it for eight hours before it will do anything at all. So here we go! Into the charger! See you tomorrow, itty-bitty electronic friend!

DEC. 26 -Okay, we're ready. I push the minuscule surface of the thing and yes! It glows! First blue, then red. Blue, red, blue, red ... zzzzz ... What? Oh, right. Time to get busy, because this is, first and foremost, a business implement that will enable me to go anywhere I want and talk to all the important people who want to talk to me while I'm going from here to there. I won't be one of those people who meander about with a Stone Age cellphone at their head pouring dangerous microwaves into their brain. I'll be one of those spiffy wonks I always sort of despised, now that I come to think of it, looking like jabbering psychos escaped from the hospital and conversing with imaginary friends. This is the next development in intercranial communication, and now I'm on the leading edge of it! Let's see how this thing fits into my ear. Uh ... it doesn't.

DEC. 27 -Well, it's a good thing I called Forbisher, Trotsky, and Lamont. They all have the exact same Bluetooth thingamabob and swear that you get used to the way it doesn't fit into your ear but sits there on the outside of the canal, dangling in mid-air. They also say that it doesn't matter that there's nothing near your mouth to speak into once you accept that it works. So I'm going to go to the next step: pairing my headset with my cellphone. Now where did I put the instruction booklet?

DEC. 28 -Found it! It was in the garbage with yesterday's turkey.

DEC. 29 -What's up with this damn thing? It won't "discover" my cellphone. Let's take it a step at a time. Push the on/off area of the headset. Here. No, wait. Here. Blue, red, blue. It's looking for my phone. I'll reboot my phone. Ah! It's pairing! Pairing ... pairing ... pairing ... What the @#!@#$!

DEC. 30 -My trip to Verizon was very nice. I only had to wait ten minutes until the guys behind the desk completed their conversation with each other, and then one of them took my Bluetooth and my phone through a door marked employees only. Returning in three minutes, he said, "It works now." And so it did. I put the thing in my ear and drove back to the office talking merrily to people who for some reason kept saying, "Are you at the bottom of a swimming pool?"

DEC. 31 -I'll admit, I'm discouraged. After I wrote the last entry, my little pal blinked in a variety of colors and died. It seems that while it was discovering my phone and then pairing with it, and as a result of subsequent usage (of approximately 25 minutes), the Bluetooth lost its charge and expired. What's going to happen now?

JAN. 1 -Happy 2009! The sun is shining. The early birds are attacking the frozen worms. And my ear is clear of protuberances. That's right. I have given up the Tooth. I am and will remain Toothless.

After hours of searching, the doodad found the framitz again, and I got some action out of the whole schmear. It took most of an evening. Then I strolled around the room, talking with people I had no desire to speak to simply to feel like one of the Bluetooth generation. At some point I strolled past a mirror and caught a glimpse of myself, doing that Bluetooth thing.

I saw. And I removed the parasite from my head.

It's a start. Now, how about we spend the rest of the year getting rid of all the other stupid stuff we're plugged into? Take that, progress!

PHOTO (COLOR)

By Stanley Bing

Rhetorical Analysis

Stanley Bing’s article, “Happy Blue Year,” is written satirically.  The article was written in Fortune Magazine and at first seems to be about his mishap with his new gadget, a Bluetooth.  Being in Fortune Magazine many business men or women who are caught up in the technical are going to be reading it, but the purpose is not so clear up front.  Once you read the article and get past the satire, you see that his purpose is writing to the people who are caught up in the technological age and addicted to all of the new technology.  He writes to them to specifically say there is no need to be “plugged into” all of these different things and sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth.

One strategy Bing uses, is a delayed theses.  The whole article seems just like a chronicle of a man who is having the typical problems with some new technological device he got, but in the end he throws his thesis out there very directly.  His thesis is the very last sentence of the whole article, “Now, how about we spend the rest of the year getting rid of all the other stupid stuff we’re plugged into?”  This works for his writing because you are not quite sure what he is trying to get at as you read the article; it seems like a humorous narrative.  But, then once you get to the thesis you understand he is addressing a greater problem, societies addiction to new gadgets.  Another characteristic of the article is the last statements of each of the paragraphs leave you with a negative thought or feeling.  A couple of examples are “Let’s see how this thing fits into my ear. Uh… it doesn’t,” “Now, where did I put the instruction booklet,” and “ What the  @#!@#$!”  By ending each paragraph with negative statements, it helps his argument against technology because it leaves the negative connotation in your mind. Also, the language he uses through out the article is not very sophisticated.   When writing in a magazine that business men or well educated people are going to be reading I wouldn’t expect an author to use words like “itty-bitty electronic friend” or “ framitz,” which when I goggled it came up in an urban dictionary online.  The word choice kept the article very simple to read, and I think he did this to go with the whole theme of undermining the high-tech and more advanced world. 

When it comes to rhetorical appeals I think he tried to use logos and pathos the most.  When making his argument with logos, he was stating reasons that these high-tech devices could be more of a hassle than anticipated.  An example is, remembering before you can use it you have to charge the battery for eight hours. Then when its charged and you begin to use it you have to worry about when is the battery going to die on you?  Or, the worry about your Bluetooth fitting, I know I never thought about how it might fit before I bought one.  Then he mentions the hassle of trying to sync it with your phone, and if you can’t figure it out, like him, you have to get someone else to do it.  All of these reasons pertain to particular problems one could run into when purchasing a Bluetooth but are also possible when purchasing any new electronic device that you are unsure how to work.  Then his appeal to pathos refers back to the conversational style he took in his writing.  He wrote out what he did and the simple thoughts that were running through his mind during the situation, but you know you would be thinking the same thing. The conversational tone and humor make a situation we all know we have been in funny, although it wasn’t at the time, and can think back to a personal experience we had and ask was it worth it?