Rhetorical Analysis Of Social Media By Thomas Friedman

Over the past several months countless changes have taken place across the world; between the increasingly bizarre presidential campaign, refugee crisis, and periods of economic change, both America and the world are seeing great periods of modification. Documenting this series of alterations is Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times. Friedman, a three time Pulitzer Prize winning author mainly focuses his writing on the different happenings in foreign affairs and globalization. To argue his different claims, Friedman is particularly effective by incorporating diction that reflects his viewpoints. In his column, “Social Media: Destroyer or Creator?” Friedman details the story of Wael Ghonim, who helped spark the Tahrir Square revolution

Friedman’s introduction to Ghonim references him as a, “very important voice.” In addition to that when discussing the eventual collapse of Ghonim’s side of the ‘Facebook revolution,” Friedman claims that “Ghonim...was marginalized” and his revolution was “stolen” by the Muslim Brotherhood. This word choice implies that Friedman believes Ghonim was wronged by his enemies and was unrightfully oppressed. Friedman is very mindful of his diction and its purpose; when informing his audience and offering factual information he uses advanced, highly specialized words. Likewise, when asserting his own opinion or injecting humor into his writing Friedman utilizes much simpler, common language. This is especially prevalent in his January 20th article “What If?” about the economic

In his article “What If?” Friedman varies his sentence length radically to convey his viewpoint on the different economic foundations. In his introductory paragraph Friedman uses only two long sentences to discuss the incipient tribulations other countries and the international markets are encountering. The next paragraph is just one sentence, simply asking, “What if a bunch of eras are ending all at once?” Friedman’s longer sentences allow his writing to flow from one sentence to another without tension, which leaves less emotional attachment. His shorter sentences, however, typically introduce new topics or ideas. These short, choppy sentences instill doubt in the reader by giving them less to think about and more to conclude for themselves. Although Friedman later expounds upon the concepts he introduces, enough emphasis is placed on the shorter sentences to where the reader is encouraged to think about and form their own ideas based upon them. This control of sentence structure is compounded with Friedman’s control of punctuation. In his article “Beware: Exploding Politics” he makes frequent use of dashes to add information and provide a casual tone for his writing, such as when he claims that the, “national OODA loop is broken -- and it couldn’t be happening at a worse time.” Friedman’s control of different syntactic elements allows him to opine and convey his arguments without boring