RA#2

Title: The death of Macho

Author: Reihan Salam

Date: 2008

Topic: The end of male dominance in the financial world and the physical world.

Analysis of Argument

Exigence: To let the reader know how and why the idea of Macho will no longer relevant and how it is slowly disappearing from our world.

Intended   Audience: This seems aimed towards a more scholarly audience because it goes in depth of why everything the writer claims is happening. But the article has an informal fell to it so it can very well be aimed at the public.  

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how our old idea of what it was to be a man no longer hold true. Men are no longer the primary breadwinners in American and Salam is pointing out that slowly that is how it will be around the world.

Claims: “The era of male dominance is coming to an end. “(page 629) Women will soon be the primary bread winners. Men and women will both had to adjust to a new social order where the two are equals.

 

Main Evidence: In this article Salam starts off with the claim “The era of male dominance is coming to an end. “(page 629) From the very begging the reader can clearly see what the article will be about. A few sentences later Salam explains how the Great Recession has begun the death of the Macho. Salam also states how the Great Depression did many of the same things that the Recession has done only that The New Deal was what saved Machismo then. He states that there is nothing like the new deal today, a political action that focused on creating jobs for men; and with our a New Deal like event happening the Macho will have to go.  Salam then goes on to how men are coping with this new social change stating that in the United States and in Europe the transition has gone fairly smooth. According to Salam this is the reason that the United States have been more peaceful then the middle east, Russia, and China where Women’s rights are very often violated and the idea of Women and men as equals is very controversial. Salam also adds how there is no way to bring back the Macho because the jobs that sustained those ideas are no longer there and both men and women will have to adapt. Salam ends by stating that these changed will happen. “We can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.” (page 636)

Rhetorical Analysis:

Writer’s Strategy #1 Definition of the Male macho

Writer’s Strategy#2 Classification and division

Writer’s Strategy#3 cause and effect with a bit of compare and contrast.

Reader Effect# 1 The bulk of the article was written in a Logos manor. It had a lot of explanations and examples as well as having a bit of research from the UN.

Reader Effect#2 there some ethos where research met with examples of people.

Reader Effect #3 very little Pathos with was okay because this article didn’t really need much of that

My Response: This article was unbelievably informative and I felt it was very credible. While the article didn’t carry a lot of emotion or personal examples I feel that it didn’t need any to sway a person to agree that Machismo is dying. My only complaint is that there was no counterargument. It was very factual but there was nothing to disagree and prove wrong.