Rhetorical Analysis Essay Example for Free

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Do you struggle to find equilibrium between excelling at work and spending productive, quality time with loved ones at home? With the technology that is available in the twenty first century, it is now possible for educated professionals to decide whether they would like to work from home and collaborate with family members to meet work demands. Alesia Montgomery is an African American Ethnographer who wrote â€Å"Kitchen Conferences and Garage Cubicles: The Merger of Home and Work in the 24-7 Global Economy†. This study was one of many published in 2008’s book entitled The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports From the Field, which focused on â€Å"providing insights into the changing nature of working families in the United States† (1008). Montgomery’s main argument is that today’s modern society and global economy have enabled families to â€Å"merge work and home in quasi-entrepreneurial ways† (1018), which will in turn deepen the attachment between family members. Her secondary claim is that the merging of these two worlds does not come without a downside; your home will no longer â€Å"serve as a refuge from job pressures† (1018) and job demands may be â€Å"made more invasive by the use of innovative communication technology† (1019). The main purpose of this essay is to identify and analyze Montgomery’s main and secondary arguments, to describe two types of support she uses, how they help her claims, and to identify her intended audience. Montgomery proposes that â€Å"transformations in gender relations, management strategies, and technological practices† (1018) play integral roles in the opportunities for families to decide how to combine or balance their home lives with work demands. She goes on to state that women’s access to equal education and equal employment opportunities have â€Å"expanded the possibilities for spousal collaboration in technical professions† (1010), and that being able to collaborate on work projects at home will create a more intimate and interdependent family. She then provides statistics showing the percentage of women graduating with a degree in engineering jumped 16. 5% in just 30 years (1011). The statistics provide hard evidence to her claim that women are gaining increasing access to technology based jobs, and appeals to the reader’s logos. Montgomery spent a period of five years in the field following a couple in their thirties, who were living in one of these collaborative, â€Å"job-sharing† (1012) middle class families in order to obtain â€Å"a view of the world from their perspective† (1008). Basing her argument off this research provides a stronger emotional connection to the writing than if Montgomery were to use sweeping generalizations throughout. Montgomery structures her essay in a narrative format, writing in the first person. She was successful at attempting to appeal to her audience’s ethos by making her writing less formal while keeping an educated voice. The writing opens with an introduction to Marjenah and Steve, who share a home with Marjenah’s parents in Silicon Valley. Montgomery appeals to her readers’ pathos by illustrating the family’s world: â€Å"Emails, faxes and phone calls linked their home to high-tech firms within Silicon Valley. Although there were no parking lots or numbered suites, their neighborhood†¦was, in some sense, a busy industrial park† (1009). Montgomery recalls the different ways in which they rely upon each other, and states that the interdependence this family possesses is an opportunity for each member help one another handle job demands. She details the countless nights Steve spent on his wife’s projects after getting home from his job as well as the way Marjenah was needed to proof read Steve’s reports and to review her mother’s paperwork for her department store job. The father worked at an outside tech firm, but served as the family’s technical support (1016). This ethnographic research directly relates to her main point that equality in the education within a family has enabled collaboration in the home, and allows us to spend more time with those we love. Combining the statistics that show women gaining access to technical jobs are increasing with the representation of a modern, job-sharing family that include both sexes collaborating on high-tech projects helps validate the essay’s argument. Montgomery’s goal is to inform families of new opportunities on how to balance work and home life, so in order to provide a full picture; she explores the potential downsides to living in a modern job-sharing family. Montgomery’s secondary claim states that working collaboratively on â€Å"job tasks at home† (1018) will increase â€Å"family cohesion† (1018), but that this combination will in turn eliminate the idea of your home being an escape from job pressures. She helps substantiate this argument by referring again to the subjects of her study, an emotional appeal. Steve summarized his perception of the situation, explaining that â€Å"job demands limited the control that they had over the time and space of family life† (1019). Montgomery makes her audience connect to this point on an emotional level by describing the conflicts the couple experienced because of the stresses their job-sharing created. She details Marjenah having to â€Å"constantly manage sounds† (1015), as well as the couple getting into arguments over the amount of energy each puts into one another’s work, citing that sometimes the main incentive for them to make up was the pressure of work calling again. It is clear to the reader that Montgomery is simply making an argument to explore this alternative lifestyle. She uses many different types of support throughout her writing in order to make her argument more informative; two will be analyzed further. Montgomery continuously includes professional opinions with quotes from past studies that are on the same topic as her own work. This gives the reader necessary background knowledge on the topic, by allowing the audience to have a more complete understanding as to how the economy has been playing a role in the decisions we make regarding how we balance our lives, since the Industrial Revolution. She opens with a quote from nineteenth century writer John Ruskin, which states home will only be home, until â€Å"the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it† (1008). This grabs her reader’s attention, and provides a possible thesis for her writing. Montgomery explains separating work and home life has not always been the normal ideal, giving her reader a brief history on the â€Å"transformation of family labor from agrarian to high-tech work† (1010). She does this with quotes and ideas from over ten different sources, many of the sources she chose are known in the fields of Anthropology and Sociology. This is extremely helpful for her ethical appeal, because it shows Montgomery took the time to gain an understanding of the contextual relevance of her selected topic. Some of the work she cites claims things such as â€Å"In the early twentieth century, corporations supplanted many family firms, credentialed engineers replaced informally trained mechanics, and ‘big science’†¦rose to prominence. †(1011) and that â€Å"Industrial transformations†¦increasingly removed production from the home, while cultural transformations valorized home as a haven from the harsh work world† (1010). This relates to the quote she opens with, because Ruskin was one of the numerous writers pushing to get the â€Å"rising middle class to embrace this new ideal† (1010), raising the question of the motives behind said quote. Including other pieces of writing that claim technology is what played a key factor in changing the way individuals and families balanced their two lives, historically, helps her introduce the idea that â€Å"separate spheres are not necessarily the most desirable family and work forms† (1018). Montgomery uses examples to support her arguments, which helps create a mental image in her audience’s mind while reading her work. Her research gathered while with Marjenah’s family, is her most used example, and is a very effective form of support. In Montgomery’s eyes, â€Å"Marjenah’s family exemplifies how new technologies, management strategies, and gender relations are changing the possibilities for work collaborations within households† (1012). She refers to their specific situation as a way to personalize Montgomery’s generalized emphasis on women’s equality in education and job opportunities as being the main factor in society once again giving families the option to â€Å"draw in† and collaborate on work. She uses examples while giving her audience background knowledge of this topic. She starts with an example describing how â€Å"employers relied upon fathers to discipline family work units in some early factories† (1010). She makes the claim that shop-keeping families saw â€Å"kin as sources of income† (1010), more specifically using examples such as â€Å"the baker’s wife iced cakes a few steps from her husband, the butcher and his son chopped meat on the same counter, and for the family of grocers home and work merged† (1010). These examples support her statement that â€Å"the separation of spheres was neither decisive nor abrupt. † (1010). Montgomery does a sufficient job regarding the amount of support she provides her audience with to back up her argument. Every writer has an intended audience. Montgomery’s study was published in a book that has a goal to highlight how culture shapes family life during shifting social and economic landscapes, so it should address a fairly educated audience. The background information provided implies that she was keeping in mind the fact that not everyone who picks up her book will have an understanding of the different norms our society has gone through regarding the separation of work and home life. To conclude, Montgomery was very successful in presenting her argument that â€Å"contemporary gender relations, management strategies and technological practices enable divers family and work forms†¦Far from weakening family bonds, these mergers of work foster family cohesion† (1010). She appealed to her audience’s logos by providing facts, statistics, expert opinions, and by citing other pieces of work on her topic. This also helped her ethical appeal, as did the personal afterward detailing her background and her credentials. Using the example of Marjenah’s family, along with the baker, butcher and grocers, helped Montgomery emotionally appeal to her audience, and to get her point across. Overall, Montgomery presented her argument very clearly; it was fact based, and very informative which makes her exploratory purpose a success.