Rhetorical Anaylsis

The Right to Drink According to Dictionary.com an argument is, “ A statement, reason, or fact for or against a point.” In the article, “Debate on lowering drinking age bubbling up” is an intense controversy over what the legal drinking should be. I have found this topic to be an extreme interest to me, do to the fact that I am a nineteen year old male, registered for selective service and legally obliged to taking actions into my own hands. This is an important issue to anyone, but particularly to those who can fight for there country, but can't legally drink. I have researched several sights and found that MSNBC to have the most accurate and concrete information. I feel that when this article was written the author had a biased opinion. Having read the article several times, I feel that the information being presented is leaning towards lowing the drinking age to age eighteen. Some ideas that support my thoughts are, that David J. Hanson, the alcohol expert at the State College of New York stated, “Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it.” In reality this makes perfect sense. The author wants us to be aware that even though the legal drinking age is twenty-one, several people drink underage and make bad choices. If they government lowers the drinking age to age eighteen, we can control what and how much young adolescents drink. However, the other flip side to this argument Mark Rosenker, the chairman on the Transportation safety board makes a good point insistng that, “Why would we repeal or weaken laws that save lives? It doesn’t make sense.” He means that since the drinking age is at twenty-one people are older and should be more responsible. This is a solid counter point, that the author uses to make sure the drinking age stays at age twenty-one. In theory, with less people drinking on the streets, the less likely for drunk driving accidents. Once the author gives a few key solid points for each side of the argument, he then goes into defining the laws in different states. I personally believe this was a smart decision that the author did. This allows other states to know why they want or do not want to lower the drinking age. I am rather surprised that the drinking age is twenty-one all around, yet each state has different ordinances. The drinking age is a Federal Law In Wisconsin adolescents under the age of twenty-one can enter a bar or drinking environment as long as they have a legal guardian residing over them. I believe that intention of this article was to persuade the readers of the pro's and con's of lowering the drinking age. I think the article is to persuade people because the author gives key points on keeping and lowering the drinking age. This could also be an informative article. The author gives the laws of each state on what is legal and defines pro's and con's of lowering the drinking age. I do not feel this would be an entertaining article, because at no point in the entire passage does the author make a joke or any type of amusement. When the author wrote this article the majority of the article is based on facts and quotes. There was not much original thinking. I feel as if the author regurgitated the information and spit it back in a different viewpoint. Although, I feel that if you are writing a persuasive article, there needs to be solid evidence to enforce your ideas and viewpoints. I did like that the quotes did support the authors ideas, they quotes made sense. I have read several articles were the quotes do not pertain to the article.. I feel that even though the article doesn't have much author insight, I feel that the article was well written. I can tell that the author has good sentence structure and the paragraphs flow. The author has all his ideas in the same paragraph, he has key points in each paragraph followed up by a couple sentences supporting his thoughts. I think that when the author wrote this article he used the ideas of Logo's. I think the article relates to Logo's ideas because he persuades by the use of reasoning. This is Logo's views because the author uses solid evidence that can be backed by facts to persuade you to one side. The author uses quote's which defiantly show reasoning.