TOW #4 - Blink

Malcolm Gladwell is an author, journalist, and speaker who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has written many nonfiction books about the way the brain works and is a very credible author. In his book Blink, he discusses the way humans think subconsciously. Malcolm writes for people interested in the way that the brain works. The book is for a general audience as it doesn’t use extremely challenging vocabulary. It explains studies or scientific research that one who is an expert in the field would understand without an explanation, but the average person would need an explanation to comprehend. Gladwell writes in the present day. As psychologists/scientists are studying more about the human mind, they are making more discoveries that Gladwell hopes to convey to his audience. Given the occasion, one can see that his purpose is to teach the audience about how they subconsciously think. However, there may be more to the purpose that I have not learned as I am only half-way through the book. Gladwell uses many rhetorical devices to achieve his purpose. He appeals to logos through the use of many studies that support his arguments. He also uses narration to show stories that connect to his arguments. For example, he uses the story of a married couple to explain a phenomenon all humans experience called thin-slicing. He also includes the audience with his writing. For example, with many of the experiments he describes, he will either give the audience a website so they can experience the experiment themselves or he will put a sample of the experiment into the book so that the readers can attempt it at home. To explain one of the experiments, he includes a list of words at the beginning of one of his chapters and asks the audience to put them in categories. The point of the experiment wasn’t to put words into categories, but to see how the actual words affected the experimented. Many of the words described old people, such as “bingo,” “Florida” and “wrinkles”. After completing the experiment many people seemed to move slowly or act slower due to their subconscious thinking about older people. By providing this list, the audience can see if their behavior changes too. This was very effective in helping the audience understand what Gladwell was trying to explain. I believe that Malcolm did accomplish his purpose of teaching the audience. I learned a lot about my subconscious and it has made me more aware of how I act and think.