Rhetorical Analysis Of Blue-Collar Brilliance And The Shop Class As Soulcraft Articles Dissertation Example

Rhetorical Analysis of Blue-Collar Brilliance and the Shop Class as Soulcraft Articles.

On analyzing the documentary Blue-Collar-Brilliance written by Mike Rose and the Shop Class as Soulcraft text written by Mathew B. Crawford, the readers can find differences in the strategies the authors used. Rose’s article is an educational documentary about intelligence obtained through blue-collar labor fields. The objective of the author focuses on the reduction of cultural differences between the manual workforces and the white forces. Another aim of this text was to subdue a common perception that the manual workers were illiterate and their intelligence could not compare to those who go through higher education.

Rose and Crawford, both of them are well known for their academic articles in the community. Mike uses explanation through storytelling to evoke emotions and understanding of the readers. He also shows the credibility of his text, by telling the audience about his educational background. On the other hand, Crawford uses a different strategy; he uses tone and style to illustrate the impacts of his premises. Crawford also shows the credibility of his documentary to the readers by giving out evidence through citing the other authors. However, the authors use similar procedures to provide proof in their texts, which focuses on the wisdom gained through the manual labor trades, despite these articles written to achieve different goals.

The American Scholar magazine published the Blue-Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose on 1st June 2009. The publishing of this article intended to impress the readers of higher intelligence, such as those who do the white collar jobs. Rose began his text by rhetorical strategies, such as storytelling and illustration on painting his mother’s picture and the environment where his uncle works (Rose 44). In the version, Rose gives a story a reflection he remembers of his mother (Rose 45). He reflects a situation whereby his mother walks in with plates on her left and two cups on her right hand, just when he had taken orders from the customers. In another instance, Rose describes the environment where his uncle works. He recalls a case where Joe took him to visit the uncle; he remembers how the chemicals’ smell; he recalls the big floor of the factory.

This style enables him to develop an emotional connection with the readers, as they can relate how Rose’s relatives battled with their roles at workplaces. This blending makes his audience sympathize with his family members about the stress they endured at work. Also, the author’s strategy to use description to depict critical understanding of how the family members carried out their daily duties. In his text, Rose uses words like work smart to support the notion (Rose 48).

Rose again uses invoking authority strategy, by giving a comprehensive explanation of his educational background. He provides his detailed information on his social services education. This explanation thus shows the reader that the author had spent several years studying to develop what he refers to as cognitive biographies. The style serves two roles when communicating with the audience. One, the strategy shows the audience that he spends time pursuing his higher education. Two, the policy helps him to defend himself when someone relates him to be unintelligent manual worker based on his arguments (Rose 49). The audience views Rose as a fellow scholar or a peer on the first role of this strategy, while the second one, the readers view him as non-biased since he uses the approach to defend the intelligence of the manual laborers. The audience would consider the author’s plan in two ways, either as like-minded or see the style as the way in which the author proves his dedication on his study. Thus both ways ensure the credibility of the article.

On the other hand, Crawford uses a different style in his article. Instead of using description and storytelling as shown by Rose, he uses style and tone to evoke emotions and understanding. Crawford also does not apply invoking authority strategy like his fellow author. Instead, he ensures the credibility of his text by providing empirical evidence, through citing the other authors. The New Atlantis Journal published the Shop Class as Soulcraft by Crawford in the year 2006. The Penguin press later released the article in 2009. The text shows the audience the values people learn by dedication and methods in which someone can use to develop or solve a problem (Crawford 7). This article targets the readers who perceive trade work as a foregone lesson. The author required an audience which believes that the learners involve training for their future duties. He uses the tone and style strategy to shape his premise in the significance of shop class, as well as to ensure the credibility of his text by providing evidence through citation of the other authors.

The author, Crawford shows his style strategy through wording on his text. The author uses well-expressed explanation, and the use of extensive vocabulary shows the readers how educated and passionate the author is regarding the existing situation. The style is evident in his introduction (Crawford 8). By reading the phrase on his introductory text, the reader would confirm that the author is literate and that he has detailed information about mechanical car repairs since the brushes out the preceding vehicles and tools used in the past to repair the cars. His style of handling more compound words such as esoteric portrays him as an educated person.

Crawford uses tone as a writing strategy to show urgency. The audience can see that the author uses this strategy throughout the article. On a sentence where the author claims how scientific managers complain about the poor and lawless of the materials; he uses tone to strengthen the objective of his text, which is to brush out the past lessons (Crawford 9). He shows the readers on the consequences of using the previous materials in the future. Therefore, he uses this strategy to show the audience of the text the urgency of the matter when he claims that the next generation is in schools and that the development of another is in progress. Additionally, no parents would want their children to be adults who are lawless material. Therefore, the readers would be happy to have children who have self-respect and useful. Consequently, the author uses this tone to show the audience that they can fix the situation.

As the author continues with his text, he develops another strategy. Crawford strengthens his arguments by citing the other authors. In his writings, he mentioned the authors like Mike Rose, Mike Eisenberg, and Ann Nishioka Einsberg, who wrote Blue-Collar Brilliance, and Shop Class for the Next Millennium respectively (Crawford 12). Crawford cited these authors since they are credible and published authors, hence would help in building the credibility of his text. He mentioned them because most of the readers must have come across articles belonging to the mentioned authors.
In conclusion, both Mike Rose and Mathew B. Crawford texts are about values of work and intelligence. Despite them using different approaches to meet their objectives with the readers and writing to serve different purposes, all their articles focused on supporting the blue collar laborers. Both texts provided evidence on the impacts of trade and the intelligence the audience would gain if they put them into practice.

Works Cited

• Crawford, Matthew B. “Shop class as Soulcraft.” The New Atlantis 13 (2006): 7-24
• Rose, Mike. “Blue-Collar Brilliance: Questioning assumptions about intelligence, work, and social class.” The American Scholar 78.3 (2009): 43-49.