Joel Stein's Rhetorical Analysis: The New Greatest Generation

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In the 2013 TIME magazine, Joel Stein has conducted an article on the Millennial generation entitled, “The New Greatest Generation.” In this article, Stein examines the perception that older generations hold to millennials. In the first couple pages of his article, his scrutinizing comments on this generation are extremely off putting to anyone who identifies with being a millennial. Stein leads the reader to think he agrees with the old get-off-my-lawn generation. That is until the last two pages of the article. Stein uses rhetorical devices like Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to re-evaluate the perceptions on the younger generations, and to say that “millennials could be a great force for positive change.” (Stein 11,) Stein starts off the article by labeling millennials as “lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow,” just like the generations before him have done frequently. But this time he swears that this time he is right. Because he has “statistics and quotes from respected academics!” As he so screamed about in the opening lines of his first paragraph. In paragraph two, Stein uses logos to prove his point that millennials are narcissistic. He states: …show more content…

Into the fourteenth paragraph, Stein starts to defend the millennials. Stein uses Ethos to say that the Baby Boomers are not so different than the Millennials. Senior vice president of human intelligence for SparksSMG asks, "Can you imagine if the boomers had YouTube, how narcissistic they would've seemed?" He goes on to fire back at the older generations saying, "I think in many ways you're blaming millennials for the technology that happens right now." (Page 33, Paragraph 20) This is very true. You cannot blame millennials for being overly tech savvy and internet obsessed, when it is something that they have grown up with and have had at the touch of their fingertips their whole

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