Rhetorical Analysis Of Body Ritual Among The Nacirema

In the article “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” Miner successfully persuades the audience that American’s fixation and obsession with the body’s appearance and well-being is absurd by using pathos to help persuade the readers to think the same way. He is able to achieve this by allowing his readers to form a view of this “tribe” before they realize mid-way through the essay that this article about people with bizarre customs and rituals are actual modern-day American’s.
The author is writing this essay to the general public. He is doing this to inform his readers of a culture called the Nacirema. These people partake in rituals that seem unfamiliar to modern-day humans. Some of these rituals include a daily mouth-rite, visits to the holy mouth men, and visits to the latipso if they are sick.
Through this essay, the author uses repetition to help get his point across. He uses the word Nacirema to help readers distinguish the culture that these people are from. He also uses this word a large amount of times to help familiarize the readers with it and also help them figure out that Nacirema is actually American spelled backwards. He also uses the word ritual a large amount of …show more content…
At one point in his essay he says “The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different peoples behave in similar situations that he is not surprised by even the most foreign or exotic customs.” This sentence helps the reader believe that Miner has a large amount of experience in what he is telling his readers about. Miner also uses ethos when choosing words in the essay. Through his rich vocabulary used through the entire essay, the reader is lead to believe that Miner is truly educated in the culture and rituals of the Nacirema. By doing this, he also keeps his audience interested and eager to read