Eng 105 - Teenagers and Tattoos Rhetorical Analysis

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Formality is language that a writer uses to distance themselves from the audience. There are many aspects to consider when thinking about academic, or formal, writing. Organization, grammar, format, and maintaining a third person perspective, are naming a few concepts of formality. On a scale of 1- 10 I would rate Andres Martin’s level of formality an 8. His essay does include very formal and academic writing. His sentences are complex and advanced for example with Andres Martin (2000) says “Imagery of religious, deathly, or skeletal nature, the likenesses of fierce animals or imagined creatures, and the simple inscription of names are some of the time-tested favorite contents for tattoos.” (p144). He also provides the reader with a clear and concise thesis. However, he writes in first person in his final paragraph when he states “If we bear all of this in mind, we may not only arrive at a position to pass more reasoned clinical judgement, but become sensitized through our patients’ skins to another level of their internal reality.” (p 144). Writing in third person is an important part of maintaining a high level of formality in your writing. He also does not include a lot of typical evidence in his writing, instead, only includes two case studies. The expectations of Martin’s psychiatrist friends would be a high level of formality (an 8-10 out of 10) and although Martin did not score perfectly, in my opinion, he did reach their expectations.

Evidence can also be described as proof. Evidence works by having enough valid data to prove your point. It must be sufficient, typical, accurate, and relevant to the claim. By typical, the standards are that the data is not drawn from an obscure representative. Relevant, meaning that it must be centered around the same topic that the piece is about, not a random claim. Andres Martin uses case studies as proof in his writing. A case study from Martins piece (2000) is " A, a 13-year-old boy, proudly showed me his tattooed deltoid. The course depicted roll of the dice marked the day and month of his birth. Rather disappointed, he then uncovered an immaculate back, going on to draw for me the great piece he envisioned for it. A menacing figure held a hand of cards: two aces, two eights, and a card with two, sets of dates." Although Martins evidence does hold some validity it does not fully meet the STAR criteria. His child psychiatrist friends might expect more evidence. Examples from more people and therefore a better representation of the population. If Andres included a little more evidence he would have met his goal of persuading them, however, without it, he fell just short. His evidence was up-to-date considering the publishing date of the article. The data is relevant to the claim. There is just simply not enough data chosen from a typical source and the representation of the population is inaccurate.

Comparisons are contrasting two or more points in order to reveal insights about all of the points involved. In Martin’s “teenagers and tattoos” he compares the perspectives of adults and teens regarding tattoos. He compares the idea that teen’s think of tattoos as a way of permanence or a way of expressing themselves instead of adult’s initial thoughts being that they are because of self-mutilation or rebellion. Martin goes into detail about these contradicting ideas in his two case studies. Martin does a good job of persuading his fellow child psychiatrists through his comparisons because it involves an idea that they would be familiar with and also introduces a new one. His comparisons would help others to think about tattoos differently which would therefore make his comparisons successful in persuading those around him.

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