Rhetorical Analysis Of America Needs Its Nerds

The Rhetorical Analysis of the “America Needs its Nerds”
The mental capacity is treated as a disadvantage in the America, despite the fact it already helped the country many times. This long-term problem became the main topic of the Leonid Fridman’s essay “America Needs its Nerds”. The work first appeared on January 11, 1990 in the New York Times as a part of the series “Voices of the New Generation”. The author spoke about the negative attitude the American society has to smart people and demonstrates it with the usage of words like “nerd” or “geek”. Fridman’s essay applies to different groups of people, as the problem exists on different layers of the society: from schools to universities and the adult life. The author’s purpose is to demonstrate

The goal of the usage of this fact is to show readers this common term does not reflect real traits of smart people and can be treated as an insult because of that. It is one of the few examples of Fridman’s appeals to readers’ logic. The essay is based on general data; the author mentioned schools and universities promote negative attitude to smart students: “Nerds are ostracized while athletes are idolized” (Fridman). But he did not use any statistical or science data to support his position. For example, Fridman could provide data about scholarships and other types of funding for sports and other activities. The author also mentioned that such negative attitude to smart citizens is not common for other developed countries. While he named the region, “in East Asia, a kid who studies hard is lauded and held up as an example to other students” (Fridman), he did not provide more detailed information, like results of surveys or funding statistics of the foreign universities. It is also possible to question this argument, at least in respect of the past. It is difficult to provide a source, but there was a joke that said “the intellectual is a kind of an insult” in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and some of its

For example, it was expressed in his repeated addresses to readers. His choice of words, like “do we really expect to stay afloat… [or] our fault lies not so much with our economy” (Fridman), shows the author does not try to blame other peoples, while admits all parts of the society, including “nerds and geeks”, should participate in the problem solving. The emotional appeal appears from the beginning of the text, as it was mentioned above. “There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only derogatory terms” (Fridman), the author starts with the expression of his negative opinion about the situation. He uses the essay to flip reader to his side. The emotional appeal also supported by words like “ostracized”, “deprived” or “ashamed” that helped the author to show the severity of the situation in the