Christina Hoff Sommers Men It's In Their Nature Summary

In “Men -- It’s in Their Nature”, Christina Hoff Sommers acknowledges that society pushes for gender equality and neutralizing gender roles, but she argues that each male has a neurological predisposition that cannot be changed. Sommers introduces her argument through diction with word choice that contributes a negative connotation as she represents society’s view on masculinity. The negative connotation of Sommers’s word choice generates a negative tone in the opening of her argument, but using humor, Sommers lightens this tone to become more humorous but still serious. Syntax is also used through the use of punctuation adding another element of humor to her argument. Sommers argues that human nature cannot be changed no matter how many people want it to and portrays her argument through her word choice, changes in tone, and her use of punctuation to express humor. Sommers’s diction uses word choices with a negative connotation in the beginning of her essay and sparsely through the end to portray society’s view on male masculinity. Sommers introduces her argument with an anecdote about her son’s high school class visiting Israel that included an activity that required the students to share each other's feelings, but the boys chose not to participate. Sommers describes the supervisor's reaction to this …show more content…
In her diction, Sommers’s word choice generates a pessimistic tone as the essay begins, but she lightens that tone with humor in select sections in order to further persuade her audience to agree with her opinion. Humor is added into this selection through Sommers’s careful use of dashes and quotation marks that provide brief pauses in sentences to emphasize and add humor to a