America Needs Its Geeks Analysis

When we think of the words nerd and geek, we think of a smart person with freckles and thick-framed glasses. They are usually bullied by the athletic people of a school and are at the lowest rung of the social ladder. But why do we also think about that same person being harmed and ridiculed? Why can’t we praise their intelligence and use it to improve our society? These questions are argued in Leonid Fridman’s “America Needs Its Nerds.” In order to do this, Fridman uses rhetorical strategies such as commonly known references, unconventional sentence structure, and conversational word choice.

Fridman alludes to different global societies and academies in order to support his argument effectively. The most prominent is Harvard. He references …show more content…
He uses the words “outcast” and “ostracized” to describe nerds and geeks in order to stress the what they feel. The reader would feel pity for nerds and geeks and win them over emotionally. He also includes a dictionary definition of the word geek in order to compare “...a freak biting the head off a live chicken,” to “someone dedicated to pursuit of knowledge,” and how in American society, it is seen as the same thing. The fact that geeks are being compared to something as absurd as someone biting the head off a chicken triggers a logic/emotional reaction. It isn’t logical that something common in society would be compared to that definition, and it also triggers pity because of the cruelty of that comparison. He uses “prestigious” and “materially rewarding” to describe professorships “In many parts of the world...” and uses adjectives of the same connotation to describe American “...average baseball players…” He does this to show how ridiculous it is for athletes from America to have the same social standing as international professors. This is an example of how intelligence praised in the rest of the world while it is scorned in