Rhetorical Analysis Of Freakonomics

The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner talks about many different things, including cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers, how abortion lowered crime rates, how a street crack gang works, and whether the way parents raise their children even matter. These topics seem to have nothing in common, but all of these topics were identified in the same way: an economist (Levitt) looked at school test scores, crime data, and all sorts of other information, looking at them in unconventional ways. Because of that, he has come to many interesting and unique conclusions that make complete sense. These findings were based on some simple ideas: the power of incentives, conventional wisdom is not always right, things may not have obvious causes, and experts often serve their own interests instead of the interests of others. Perhaps the most important idea in the book is, as Levitt and Dubner state, “Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so” (14). Freakonomics uses many different rhetorical strategies to show the importance of looking deeper into seemingly commonplace things. Levitt and Dubner use comparison to achieve the purpose. Comparisons are used to form a basis for an investigation into certain topics. For example, the authors say, “What do

That tone is used to enforce a feeling of a conversation as opposed to a feeling of a lecture. For example, the authors say, “Who cheats? Well, just about everyone, if the stakes are right … Some cheating leaves barely a shadow of evidence. In other cases, the evidence is massive. Consider what happened …” (Levitt and Dubner 19). The casual, informative tone achieves the purpose by keeping the reader interested. A book written with exactly the same information and conclusions as Freakonomics, but written with a formal tone instead of an informal, conversational tone would be much less