Albert Einstein Rhetorical Devices

Rhetorical Analysis #1 Revision

Written by a renowned physicist, Albert Einstein, both passages were written for anybody who was interested in physics and economic ideologies. In the time when science and technology were rapidly developing, people sought for new information about physics and economy as they had to catch up with rapidly developing world. With developing technology, people, the audience of the passages A and B, had more access to media--which made Einstein’s high reputation as a physicist possible. Using different rhetorical approaches, such as qualifying language, grammatical tenses, and point of view, Einstein wrote passage A to explain the concept of physics--specifically, the relationship between time and space--while

he wrote passage B in order to convince the audience about the goodness of socialist and planned economy for betterment of future society.
Einstein uses different qualifying languages in order to make his passages more concise and professional.

For example, in passage A, Einstein used words “coordinates,” in order to describe the position of an object. Einstein could have used the word “position” in order to convey the meaning of space and time, but he believed “coordinate” would be more concise and mathematical; additionally, Einstein in passage A assumed that the readers would know what “coordinate” meant, looking from the fact that he lacked an explanation of what coordinate was. Making Einstein’s passages concise and intellectual was critical for Einstein as a renowned scientist; the audience not only included eager citizens, but also the scientists. In passage B, Einstein uses the words “society,” “production,” and “community” to explicitly show that he was intended to write about society and the economic system/ideology. Since words such as authoritarian, socialist, and communist have many common elements, Einstein specifically indicated that “socialist” economy will bring prosperity to the world. By using the qualifying language, Einstein successfully wrote concise and professional paragraphs, increasing his credibility as a renowned

scientist.
Einstein uses different grammatical tenses, such as present, past and subjunctive tenses, in order to show his uncertainty of his information. For example, passage A generally shifts from present to the past, then past to present. In passage A, Einstein says “physics deals…” and then shifts to “the latter was…” in order to show the change of information from what was known to what is right now. As new discoveries were still being made at Einstein’s time, Einstein was aware that the concepts of time and space may be changed any occasion. Also, in order to show his uncertainty of his ideas, he says that “this is a lack of…”, a present tense, in order to indicate that his ideas are not verified yet. For passage B, Einstein used mainly subjunctive tense, or “would,” throughout the passage in order to assume and imagine the future society with those economic system intact. As Einstein was fully aware that his wishes will not be applied to reality for sure, Einstein had to use subjunctive tense in order to establish his uncertainty. Moreover, using the subjunctive tense allowed Einstein to make logical argument and explanations based on his knowledge on socialist and planned economy. As Einstein uses different tenses, he was able to make plausible assumptions and effectively persuade people by doing so.
Finally, Einstein uses third person perspective in passage A, while he uses first person perspective in passage B in order to differentiate his purpose of writing the passages: to inform or to convince.

Passage A is a scientific writing and should be free of bias, or objective, since this passage may be used for future references and research findings. If this passage were written in first or second perspective, the passage will appear more subjective; in other words, the passage will lose its certainty and credibility since the passages would look like as if the writer was giving his/her own opinions, instead of informing the audience. Additionally, Einstein was a renowned scientist, which meant more of his papers will be referenced for future researches; providing subjective information and tone will bring significant errors to the future findings that will follow Einstein’s paper. For passage B, Einstein wrote the passage in first person perspective, since his purpose was to convince people to believe in a socialist economy and planned economy. Writing in first person perspective brings more subjective tone, and this indicates that Einstein was not intending his essay to be informative; in other words, Einstein was not informing that only the socialist economy with a planned economy was the definite solution for the betterment of the world and its future. Moreover, using first person perspective allowed Einstein to naturally explain his argument based on his logic, rather

than forcibly imposing upon the audience that socialist economy must be established. By differing perspective, Einstein was able to differentiate the main purposes of each passage, which was to inform for passage A, and to convince for passage B.
Written by renowned scientist, Albert Einstein, the passages A and B include different rhetorical devices, such as tense, perspective, and qualifying languages, in order to establish different purposes for writing each passage. Einstein wrote passage A in order to inform about the physical concept of a relationship between time and space, hoping to interest readers or to use his essay for future references. On the other hand, Einstein wrote passage B in order to convince people about the goodness of socialist and planned economy.

Reflection
I ended up rewriting the entire essay since I had no idea how to structure the paragraph. The prompt asked to “analyze and compare” at the same time, so I struggled and ended up writing an extremely disorganized essay, which consisted of two main paragraphs dedicated to each passage with full of unexplained rhetorical approaches that Einstein made. I focused on structuring paragraphs based on Einstein’s rhetorical approaches, rather than throwing random rhetorical devices in a single paragraph unexplained (although I still can feel that my revision essay is not “flowing” and feel as if two different paragraphs are mushed together). Also, I tried to start each sentence with different word or phrases to improve my style. Moreover, I tried to fix subject-verb agreement and tense shift issues, which were my major grammatical issues, since I tried to write the essay without considering about grammar. I am not sure about the strengths of my essay, but knowing what my problems are, I believe, is my strength as a writer.
My goal next time is trying to be more conscious about grammatical errors, especially subject-verb agreements, and tense shifts. Also, I will try to structure my essay better, now I know how the outline of rhetorical analysis essay should look like.