Essay On Rhetorical Strategies Of Crawford And Davidson

Any successful piece ever published makes use of rhetorical strategies; that is being able to use language to effectively pull your reader in, and maintain their interest in order for the author to drive their point home. Two well developed examples of this are Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head, and in Cathy Davidson’s Now You See It. In both of these books the authors are able to use rhetorical strategies in similar but unique ways to manipulate the reader. In both of these informational pieces the authors discuss the topic of attention in 21st century society by using humor, repetition, and first person perspective to develop their arguments to appeal to the reader. To properly examine how these strategies are used one must first

Crawford wrote his essay because he wanted to raise awareness for, what he sees as, the growing problem of attention fragmentation. Specifically he writes,”The idea of writing this book gained strength one day when I swiped my bank card to pay for groceries. I watched the screen intently, waiting for it to prompt me to do the next step. During the following seconds it became clear that some genius had realized that a person in this situation is a captive audience. During those intervals between swiping my card, confirming the amount and entering my PIN, I was shown advertisements,” (37). By this he means that he wrote this book to show people how often and how intrusive advertisements and the media are displayed. Davidson also writes to grow awareness, but unlike Crawford she writes to show that rather than attention, specifically attention blindness, being a problem, it is actually a place for people to come together to collaborate, and compensate for each others’ shortcomings. For example, Davidson writes, “Because of attention blindness, we often arrive at a standstill when it comes to tackling important issues, not because the other side is wrong but because both sides are precisely right in what they see but neither one can see what the other sees,” (5). By this Davidson is saying by working together (and doing so by raising awareness) people can work past attention blindness,

Crawford has infused his entire piece with first person perspective, and personal stories. To begin the piece he opens with a personal story detailing how his personal attention is being diverted by advertisements in nearly every place imaginable. He continues throughout the piece to cite various situation in which advertisements, and the media have affected him. One example of this is when he writes, “We have all had the experience of sitting in an airport with an hour to kill and being unable to escape the chatter of CNN. The audio may be turned off, but if the TV is within view, I, for one, find it impossible not to look at,” (40). Crawford uses techniques like this in order to draw the reader in, and build a connection with them. By writing in first person, and using stories from his own life he is able to show the reader that the cumbersome topic of fragmented attention is applicable to the average American. Davidson uses this same technique in almost the exact same way, for example, in her opening paragraph she also begins with a personal narrative, which, just like Crawford’s, servers to pull the reader in and create a more personal connection with the reader. Throughout the piece she also incorporates more personal stories in order to achieve the same end. For example she writes, “For the last decade, I have been exploring effective ways