Rhetorical Analysis

Words: 530
Pages: 3

Throughout the years, society has stereotyped teenagers as lazy and lacking a work ethic. The pressure on teenagers to get a summer job has increased to the highest it has ever been, and people don’t understand why that is, until now. According to Derek Thompson in The Atlantics, “Teenagers Have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs-Why?” teenagers have shifted their focus towards education rather than a job. While Thompson uses stylistic elements to support his claim that teens are strategizing their future, he relies on reasoning to convince his audience with observations to inform the reader that the stereotype of lazy working teens needs to be changed. Thompson sets the foundation of his claim through reasoning to prove and convince his claim to …show more content…
Thompson asserts, “Teenagers are exquisitely sensitive to the social norms of their peers. If they see cool older teenagers scooping ice cream during their freshman summer, they’ll really look forward to a job scooping ice cream during their sophomore summer” (Thompson 24). Thompson’s observation shows how their peers eagerly anticipate teens’ job preferences. He puts a lot of focus on the power and impact their peers have on teens’ attitudes, which tests the stereotype of laziness among teenagers, adds more depth to his claim, and hooks the reader into changing their opinion. Furthermore, Thompson persuades the reader toward his claim through stylistic elements, such as word choice. He begins his article about how working a summer job prepares teenagers for adulthood; however, he discusses the decline in teenage employment with statistics. He describes summer work as “a rite of passage” to help the reader relate to how other conventional people, like them, think of teenager’s summer jobs. Thompson argues, “The summer job is considered a rite of passage for the American Teenager” (Thompson