rhetorical analysis draft 1.1
Celeste Luna
Amie Sheffer
English 1301-54123
September 19, 2013
Draft 1.1 Rhetorical Analysis Individualism is a habit of being self- reliant. A cultural value is a persons desired and preferred way of acting. Every culture has their own cultural values and individualism but whether individualism is their cultural value is up to the person entirely. This could pose a conflict when persuading the wrong culture especially a culture as diverse as the American culture. Poranee Sponsel is a born and raised Thai who is now a professor at a university in Hawaii and gives us the outsider’s perspective of the American culture. In Sponsel’s article “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural value” Sponsel unsuccessfully persuades Americans that individualism is an American cultural value by contrasts, stereotyping, and bias remarks. Sponsel uses contrasts to persuade. Sponsel tells of an American family and their grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease who is cared for only by hired help; “[…] her daughter visits and relieves the helper occasionally. The mature granddaughter […] rarely visits. Yet they all live in the same neighborhood. However each lives in a different house…” (82) Sponsel then addresses American individualism based on the family by stating “It seems to me that the value of individualism and its associated independence account for these apparent gaps in family ties and support. In contrast to American society, in Thailand older parents with long-term illness are asked to move in with their children if they are not already living with them. […] Family relations provide one of the most important contexts for being a ‘morally good person’ which is traditionally the principal concern in the Buddhist society of Thailand.” (83) This was bad persuasion on Sponsel’s part because she assumes that this one American family represents all of American society. If her readers are Americans then she would have offended them
Amie Sheffer
English 1301-54123
September 19, 2013
Draft 1.1 Rhetorical Analysis Individualism is a habit of being self- reliant. A cultural value is a persons desired and preferred way of acting. Every culture has their own cultural values and individualism but whether individualism is their cultural value is up to the person entirely. This could pose a conflict when persuading the wrong culture especially a culture as diverse as the American culture. Poranee Sponsel is a born and raised Thai who is now a professor at a university in Hawaii and gives us the outsider’s perspective of the American culture. In Sponsel’s article “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural value” Sponsel unsuccessfully persuades Americans that individualism is an American cultural value by contrasts, stereotyping, and bias remarks. Sponsel uses contrasts to persuade. Sponsel tells of an American family and their grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease who is cared for only by hired help; “[…] her daughter visits and relieves the helper occasionally. The mature granddaughter […] rarely visits. Yet they all live in the same neighborhood. However each lives in a different house…” (82) Sponsel then addresses American individualism based on the family by stating “It seems to me that the value of individualism and its associated independence account for these apparent gaps in family ties and support. In contrast to American society, in Thailand older parents with long-term illness are asked to move in with their children if they are not already living with them. […] Family relations provide one of the most important contexts for being a ‘morally good person’ which is traditionally the principal concern in the Buddhist society of Thailand.” (83) This was bad persuasion on Sponsel’s part because she assumes that this one American family represents all of American society. If her readers are Americans then she would have offended them
Cited: Natadecha-Sponsel, Poranee. “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural Value.” Distant Mirrors, ed. Philip De Vita. 1998. 79-84. Print.