In the January 7, 2011 New York Times article “Against Headphones,” Virginia Heffernan argues her stance on headphone usage and related hearing loss. Ms. Heffernan believes headphone use should be reduced due to the potential impacts on hearing. She wrote this article to inform parents that their children’s earphones could be damaging their health, stating “… protecting our kids’ hearing is not just as important as protecting their brains; it is protecting their brains.” The use of the word “our” implies Ms. Heffernan is also a parent, and she is connecting with the intended audience in order to protect children. The article also includes historical information regarding headphone and the social implications of headphone usage. The added information helps create a background for her argument and also supports the argument. Ms. Heffernan is successful in crafting an article that connects with her intended audience and applying targeted rhetoric to argue for the reduction of headphone usage. Ms. Heffernan starts her argument with the statistic “One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association.” Immediately starting with a …show more content…
Several quotations will elicit a smirk or laugh from a parent reading the article. The quotation “Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have hummingbird attention spans but that they are going deaf.” plays on the perception by parents that their children cannot focus. Another quote “it’s amazing that the intensely engineered frankensounds that hit our eardrums when we listen to iPhones are still called music.” the word frankensounds is probably what every parent thinks of their children’s music. Using emotion is not a strong part of the author’s argument but the few inclusions do connect to the