Rhetoric and Sources on Consumerism
Sadia M_________
February 20, 2018
Rhetorical Analysis of Four Sources on Consumerism
In the Guardian article, “Pope Francis Attacks Consumerist Society”, the religious correspondent Harriet Sherwood informes the reader about the Pope’s address on Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, in which the Pope criticized the growing consumerist culture. The Pope encouraged those who attended the mass to “pursue a life of modesty” and to act in a sober and balanced way (Sherwood). Sherwood also discusses the Pope’s “surprising omission” of serious issues like the refugee crisis, despite it dominating recent news headlines (Sherwood).
In in the blog Family Matters, the blog post “How to Save Your Kids From the Consumerism Trap” Ronit Baras, expresses her struggle to keep her kids “from falling into the consumerism trap” (Baras). Because of all the ads that the kids are bombarded with, going to the supermarket with them is “the scariest thing” for Baras. Baras then provides a manual on how to save your kids from becoming compulsive consumerists.
In the National Journal, the article “Borrowing Our Way to Prosperity” by Bruce Stokes criticizes “unsustainable American consumption” for the harm it causes to U.S and global economy (Stokes). Although increased consumption has led to a massive economic expansion, savings rates have gone down, while debt is on the rise. The author introduces three ways to approach this issue: creating policies that encourage savings, making the currency weaker, and inducing a recession. Stokes concludes that if Americans continue on the “consumer binge”, they would have the fate of the lazy grasshopper that he alludes to in the article.
The academic journal “The ‘Dark Side’ of Shopping” by Andreea Maniu and Monica Zaharie is about the issue of materialism. It looks at materialism from two perspectives. The first is the way that advertising contributes to it and the second is the way that materialism leads to compulsive consumerist behaviors. They provide many studies to show the negative consequences to adopting dangers consumerist behavior through advertisement.
Rhetorical Situation
The publisher felt the need to write about the Pope’s address because many people would want to know what this important figure had to say on Christmas Eve. This news articles appears in The Guardian, which is a British newspaper. From the drop down list, it is evident that it covers many areas of interest such as culture, lifestyle in addition to news. The Guardian has a U.S, Australian, International edition, a comment section, which adds to the newspaper’s ethos.
The need for writing a blog post on kids and consumerism springs from the fact that consumerist culture is on the rise and kids are huge participants in it due to their heavy exposure to ads that are specifically designed to target their interests. Family Matters has no ads, which makes the massage of protecting our kids from consumerism more effective. It also adds to the blog’s credibility for its alignment with its values. Moreover, having the books that the blogger has published on the subject of children on her blog as well as being a mother of three makes her opinion on this subject more plausible.
The author felt the need to write the magazine article because he observes that large scale consumption is growing rapidly and causing negative consequences on the American economy. He mentions that annual consumption has increased by a rate of 3.6 percent in the last ten years (Stokes). So it is a current issue in need of being addressed. The employment of facts and figures that are released by institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve goes in alignment with this topic and makes the article very reliable.
The academic journal arises from the need to have a research paper that studies the relationship between materialism, advertising, and radical consumer behaviors. Materialism in this day and age is very prevalent and is fed by advertising and leads to compulsive consumerism. Thus having a reference on this subject is very significant. Furthermore, the paper offers numerous statistical evidence to support its claims, which renders it more authentic. Thus, all the sources are similar in that they all uses the ethos rhetorical appeal, be it through unique features, statistical evidence, personal experience, to convince the reader of their credibility.
The Purpose
The Family Matters blog post aims towards both exposing consumerism and equipping parents with skills to protect their kids from “the consumerism trap” (Baras). The author describes this trap as “a very strong, well oiled and sophisticated machine” (Baras). This vivid metaphor elucidates the author’s intent to present consumerism as a repulsive idea. The twenty-four steps that the author provides show the main goal of the blog post which is to teach parents how to save their kids from falling to consumerist behaviors.
On the other hand the magazine article aims at informing the readers that consumer spending is growing and leading to huge increase in debt and less savings. Then it provides three solutions to the problem. The author uses the metaphor of the ant and the grasshopper, whereby Americans are the grasshopper who is busy consuming and not saving anything for the the future, to explain the situation to the audience. It also aims to educate the reader of the the details of this economic issue through various statistical numbers and the solutions suggested.
Although the articles above may seem to have a different purpose, they all provide the steps to end the “addiction to consumption” (stokes). The only difference is that the blog deals with the issue on a micro level by providing steps that parents should take to keep their kids from becoming compulsive shoppers, while the magazine article attempts to provide three large scale steps to help the American government end massive consumption.
The other articles have their unique purposes. The newspaper article aims to inform the reader of what the Pope said on Christmas Eve and to criticize his mere focus on consumerism. This is conveyed via Sherwood’s phrase, “surprising omission” to describe the Pope’s choice to not talk about issues like the refugee crisis, which suggests to the readers that the Pope has failed to address an urgent issue that everyone expects him to discuss in his speech.
On the other hand, the aim of academic paper is to highlight the negative role that advertising plays in leading to materialism and the deviant consumerist behaviors that are adopted as a result of materialism. The authors do that to help us understand the consequences of consumerist values “through creating a conceptual framework that is deemed to explain directly the relationships of the constructs above mentioned” (Maniu and Zaharie).
The Audience
The audience of the four sources is very diverse. However, the magazine article as well as the academic journal article do have some commonality in their audiences. The audience for the National Journal is predominantly government officials and economy specialists. This can be seen through the use of economics related terminology like “debt-service ratio”, “housing bubble”, and “current-account deficit” throughout the article (Stokes). Additionally, the author demands actions that can not be taken by the average person such as “enact[ing] policies that reward savings” or “induc[ing] a recession”, which shows that the author expects his readers to be policy makers or powerful economists. As in the aforementioned article, the academic journal is not directed to the general public. The multiple studies and data that it provides show that it is meant to be read by academics who are specialist in economy and advertising. Thus, both of these articles share an audience that understands economics and knows how to decipher the terminology and the data provided.
The blog post and the newspaper are targeted to two distinct group of readers. For the first one, the targeted audience are parents and those who are concerned with children’s well-being. This can be seen through the phrase “Your Kids” in the title, which suggests that whoever is reading it is a parent. Also, since Family Matters is a “practical parenting blog”, the readers of the blog content are most likely to be parents. In contrast, the Guardian article is directed to a different demographic. Since the article appears as religious correspondence and is about what the Pope said on Christmas Eve, the audience is mostly religious people. Catholics in particular are a targeted audience because they are likely to care about what the head of the Catholic Church has to say on this occasion. Thus, these articles have two distinct audiences.
The Genre
The genre of the newspaper article is a religious correspondence that appears in The Guardian, which has a large audience and it can be reached in print and online. The article was published in the same day of the address and is very short. It differs from the rest of the sources in having many ads as well as a comment section for online readers.
The genre of the second source is blog post on a practical parenting blog. Because there is one person in charge of writing the posts, the writing is very laid-back and anecdotal. Moreover, the language used is simple for everyone to understand. This sets the blog apart from the rest of the sources, because they all maintain a very formal and sophisticated terminology.
The National Journal is a political magazine. The magazine claims to helps members “navigate the world of policy and politics at a time when the landscape has become increasingly complex” (About). The main page has a picture of the White House, which serves as a political and authority symbol for a magazine that is centered around American politics. Although the article is on economics, the changes it demands can only be implemented politically and that is why this article appears on a political magazine.This source shares a similarity with the academic journal in that this genre is for people who have interest or are specialists in economics.
The genre of the paper is an academic journal. Since this paper is an academic research it has an abstract that summarizes its content. It also has solid evidence to support its claims such as statistical data and studies on the subject of materialism. However, it is different because it is the only source that does not provide any pictures or visual aids.
The Stance
Although different in genre, the four articles have a similar stance, which is critical of subscribing to consumerist behaviors. Both the blogpost and the magazine article associate compulsive consumerism with losing. The author of the blog post asserts that “[i]f you give up to consumerism, you will lose your kids to it” (Baras). Similarly, the element of loss or “falling into the consumerism trap” is present in the magazine article through the metaphor of the grasshopper, in which the American consumer is compared to Aesop’s grasshopper that consumes gluttonously and turns out to be a looser when hard times come.
Moreover, both the bog post and the magazine article are accompanied with almost an identical picture that has a lot to say about their stance. Under the blog post title is a picture of a mall packed with people whose features are blurred and smudge. In the same way, a picture of a huge crowd of shoppers who seem to be busy stuffing their shopping carts is inserted into the last page of the magazine article. The use of these two pictures, which illustrate how consumerism dehumanizes people by making them act like machines that participate in an unending quest for stuff, convies how the critical attitude is evident in both sources.
The attitude of disapproval toward consumerism appears in the newspaper article and academic journal through the association of consumerist behaviors with less autonomy. In the Guardian article, Pope Francis was quoted as saying that abandoning consumerism and hedonism is “[t]he way of authentic liberation” (Sherwood). So it is implied that the freedom of compulsive consumers is restricted by the stuff they own or plan to won. The stance of the academic journal resembles the Pope’s when the authors state, “consumers behave like puppets, being handled according to certain objectives established by different companies” (Maniu and Zaharie). Thus, both articles conclude that consumers lose some of their autonomy as acquiring stuff becomes their possession and companies see them as a means to an end.
Work Cited
Baras, Ronit. “How to Save Your Kids from The Consumerism Trap.” Website. Family Matters 4 June. 2015. 8 January. 2018
Maniu, Andreea Ioana, and Monica Maria Zaharie. “The ‘dark side’ of shopping–materialism as a driving force in deviant consumer behaviour.” The Proceedings of the International Conference, Marketing – from Information to Decision, no. 4, 2011, p. 231+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A402861364/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=79d1d405. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.
“Pope Francis attacks consumerist society in midnight mass at Vatican; Pontiff tells Catholic faithful to reject hedonism but makes no mention of refugee crisis in homily at St Peter’s Basilica.” Guardian [London, England], 25 Dec. 2015. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A438431394/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=5911e969. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.
Stokes, Bruce. “Borrowing Our Way to Prosperity.” The National Journal, 20 Jan. 2007, pp. 30-32.
