The Argument Culture Summary and Response Essay Example

Audience Analysis The audience I will try to reach are young people who have grown up in the information age. They will be approximately 18-35 years old. It doesn’t matter what their educational or ethnic background is. The audience are the ones who grew up in with the internet and media constantly in their face. I believe the targeted audience already knows a lot about confrontation because it’s everywhere on the internet and in the news. I don’t believe they know a lot about the other side or how to avoid confrontations. They just don’t have the experience. My relationship with this audience is minimal since I am of a different generation. I will try to open their minds to looking into another point of view. A point of view that is less confrontational and says “let’s just get along.” I would like to come across as a fellow spectator. I am in no way an expert on the subject. I am someone who read the essay and said “hey Deborah Tannen’s argument makes sense.” Like my audience, I never really thought about it that much. I want to come across as someone that wants things to be less confrontational and to see things from all sides. I want the audience to see that there are more sides to a story than two and to open their mind to all kinds of different views without jumping to a fast conclusion.

The Argument Culture is an excerpt from Deborah Tannen’s book. Deborah Tannen is a best-selling author whose books focus on how men and women have different conversation habits. (pg. 475) “In this essay taken from her Argument Culture book, Tannen tries to convince her audience that adversarial debates lead to poor communication.” (pg. 475) The essay states that only hearing two sides of an argument leads to distorted facts, wastes, time, limits our thinking, and encourages us to lie. (pg. 478-479) Today’s society leads people to think in terms of one side against the other. An example of this would be debates. In a debate, there are