Jeanne DArc Hosea

Writing 1010
Erin Rogers
February 22, 2016
Rhetorical Analysis
In class we have been discussing and finding evidence of ethos, pathos, and logos. We
were told to choose and analyze a specific article either given to us or one that we found on our
own, and give examples of how the author portrayed ethos, pathos, and logos in his or her
writing. The article that I chose to analyze was Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas
Carr. This article is aimed towards everyone but mainly adults. The main point that the author is
trying to show in this text is that the internet is subsuming most of our other intellectual
technologies causing us to change the way in which we think, leading to the conclusion of
stupidity. He supports that idea by talking about how media started with the printing press, and
later evolves into easy accessible reads online. He gives an example of how his reading went
from wonderful, to a struggle. Im not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most
strongly when Im reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy
Thats rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three
pagesI feel as if Im always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading
that used to come naturally has become a struggle. The author appeals to his audiences
emotions by using experiences from his own life and the lives of others. Reading some of the
experiences that the examples in this article have faced, you know that they lived it and you

somehow connect with them. The purpose of this article is to inform us and alert us that the
internet and technology are changing the way we think and process things.
Throughout this article, the author uses ethos to convince the readers that because of the
development of media, our thinking and brain processing has changed. Ethos is defined as appeal
to ethics or convincing the reader using a credible character. One example that the author gives
us is of Maryanne Wolf, "a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. He says how Wolf
worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net may be weakening our capacity for the
kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and
complex works of prose commonplace. She later states that our ability to interpret text, to
make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction,
remains largely disengaged. The author uses Wolfs position as a psychologist to state that,
reading paper material that first came out with the printing press was usually the norm, but now
with technology our capacity to deep read has been distorted. We arent able to interpret text like
we used to because of the easy access of reading on the media. Another example of how ethos is
incorporated into this writing is when the author introduces Bruce Friedman as a source. Bruce
Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine also has described how
the Internet has altered his mental habits. I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and
absorb a longish article on the web or in print. Because of the Internet, this blogger Bruce
Friedmans mental habits have been changed to the point where, he has trouble trying just trying
to read a long article or some other source that comes up on the web.
Another form rhetorical device that the author incorporates into this reading is pathos.
Pathos is an appeal to emotion or its where the author tries to convince the audience by creating
an emotional response. One example of this is when Carr states that the internet, an

immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual

technologies. Its becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our
calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. The thought of the internet absorbing most
of our intellectual technologies is pretty scary to think about. Its becoming our lifeline to the
social and mental aspect of the world.
The last rhetorical device that the author uses in his writing is logos. Logos is an appeal
to logic or in other words, you try to persuade an audience by reason or facts. The author works
this specific rhetorical device by giving us examples of studies. One study that was recently
published was conducted by scholars from University College London [that suggested] that we
may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. The scholars examined
computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sitesthey found
that people using the sites exhibited a form of skimming activity, hopping from one source to
another and rarely returning to any source theyd already visitedThe authors of the study
report: It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional senseIt almost seems that
they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense. Based on this study, the people being
tested show a tendency of just skimming articles which leads to a conclusion of avoiding reading
in the traditional sense.
In this reading of Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, the main point that
the author is trying to show in this text is that the internet is subsuming most of our other
intellectual technologies and its causing us to change the way in which we think, leading to the
conclusion of stupidity. He persuades us by using the three rhetorical devices: ethos, logos, and
pathos and uses examples of those devices.