Living in the digital age, Americans are often faced with question on whether this rise of technology in their society is either improving it or destroying. Within the younger populations who working on getting an education, the question is changed to how this technology is effecting their education. Digital communication is one of the culprits found when questioning the impact that technology has their education, more specifically their literacy development. In “IMHO: Is Digital Communication Good or Bad – or Both,” Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein employ respectful diction, logical proposals, and thorough understanding of the larger conversation to convey digital communication’s shortcomings and apathetic affect on literacy development.
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The authors carefully chose their diction as they try to stay mindful of both sides of the argument. An example of this comes while Graff and Birkenstein acknowledging the pro digital communication where that state that “thanks to the internet, our potential knowledge is now thousands of times greater than ever before” (168). From this first example, the reader should be able to not only notice the authors’ use of diction, but also should notice what they are trying to accomplish with there use of diction. The key word of this example is potential. The use of potential signifies that Graff and Birkenstein are aware that the internet is not a sure fire way to increase one’s knowledge. Being aware of this is not only a way for the authors’ to maintain their understanding of the larger conversation, but also shows them actively trying to refrain from personal biases. After understanding the key word, the reader can now look at the rest of the example. Now looking at the rest of the quote, the reader will notice that the tone of the sentence shifts to one of enthusiasm dictated by the authors’ word choice. The use of “greater than ever before” brings about this sense of enthusiasm (168). This shift in tone is caused by the simply by the word potential, …show more content…
The authors make statements that are seemingly logical as they contain a specific idea followed by reasonable explanation. One the first examples of this appears in the second paragraph of this article, when they make the pro side statement that “new online technologies make us smarter by exposing us to a wide range of perspectives and giving us instant access to massive stores of new information” (167). This single example demonstrates how elaborate the authors are at illustrating their logical appeals. In this example, the idea followed by the reason format can be seen. The idea being that the new information is make us smarter, which is a nice, compact statement that can be easily interpreted by the reader. Moving on to the reason, which is clearly indicate with the word “by”, is where we begin to see the how elaborate Graff and Birkenstein’s statements are. First thing to notice is that they don’t give the reader only one reason why the “idea statement” should be true, but two reasons to cover a broader basis and also to cover any holes left in the previous reason. With the first reason being the that these new technologies expose readers and writers to wider range of perspectives, and the second reason being that it gives
The authors carefully chose their diction as they try to stay mindful of both sides of the argument. An example of this comes while Graff and Birkenstein acknowledging the pro digital communication where that state that “thanks to the internet, our potential knowledge is now thousands of times greater than ever before” (168). From this first example, the reader should be able to not only notice the authors’ use of diction, but also should notice what they are trying to accomplish with there use of diction. The key word of this example is potential. The use of potential signifies that Graff and Birkenstein are aware that the internet is not a sure fire way to increase one’s knowledge. Being aware of this is not only a way for the authors’ to maintain their understanding of the larger conversation, but also shows them actively trying to refrain from personal biases. After understanding the key word, the reader can now look at the rest of the example. Now looking at the rest of the quote, the reader will notice that the tone of the sentence shifts to one of enthusiasm dictated by the authors’ word choice. The use of “greater than ever before” brings about this sense of enthusiasm (168). This shift in tone is caused by the simply by the word potential, …show more content…
The authors make statements that are seemingly logical as they contain a specific idea followed by reasonable explanation. One the first examples of this appears in the second paragraph of this article, when they make the pro side statement that “new online technologies make us smarter by exposing us to a wide range of perspectives and giving us instant access to massive stores of new information” (167). This single example demonstrates how elaborate the authors are at illustrating their logical appeals. In this example, the idea followed by the reason format can be seen. The idea being that the new information is make us smarter, which is a nice, compact statement that can be easily interpreted by the reader. Moving on to the reason, which is clearly indicate with the word “by”, is where we begin to see the how elaborate Graff and Birkenstein’s statements are. First thing to notice is that they don’t give the reader only one reason why the “idea statement” should be true, but two reasons to cover a broader basis and also to cover any holes left in the previous reason. With the first reason being the that these new technologies expose readers and writers to wider range of perspectives, and the second reason being that it gives