Within an excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” John Dicker explains that Wal-Mart is a troubling corporation. Dicker begins his article by discussing why the store is so popular within the news in an age of global terrorism, coming to the conclusion that Wal-Mart has a huge scope in the United States and that it has more scandals, lawsuits, and stories than any other supercenter. Continually, he goes on to explain that Wal-Mart outsources jobs and their companies demands makes it hard for employees to have livable wages and good working conditions. Furthermore, Dicker addresses the claim that Wal-Mart provides good jobs, by destroying this perception with statistics showing how employees live in poverty and that their union scene …show more content…
is a joke. Finally, Dicker concludes his article by showing that Wal-Mart does not have a pleasant story to tell because the facts themselves are far from desirable. Also, the author has written for many publications, therefore the arguments presented are taken into consideration in a serious matter. Dicker presents his argument in a way that proves useful, while also being effective in his approach to the audience, and develops the article in a meaningful manner. The types of information that are presented in the article are important in considering the article’s usefulness, proving the importance of the piece. Dicker includes a lot of titles from various articles published by major companies, which helps establish his logos. Specifically, when Dicker is showing that Wal-Mart is a hot topic in the news during an age of terrorism, he includes a powerful title from Fast Company, “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know” (789). With the inclusion of titles of articles discussing Wal-Mart, the author strengthens the importance of the piece by providing facts on relevant aspects of society. Also Dicker includes quotes from the leaders of the company, using them to develop his argument in an effectful way, as seen when he discusses Lee Scott’s counterargument to those opposed to his company, “We’re taking this time to say, ‘Hold on a minute, we have good jobs’” (795). Continually, he presents his audience with many statistics, convincing them that Wal-Mart is not as innocent as you may think. When discussing the wages at Wal-Mart, Dicker compares a yearly wage to the poverty line, “nearly $1,000 below the poverty line” (793). With this statistic and the others presented in the article, Dicker enforces the fact that this topic is something to be discussed. Furthermore, the way Dicker presents his statistics allows for the audience to get emotional over the topic, giving the author an appeal to pathos. The ways in which the author presents information builds his logos up very strongly, letting his audience build trust with the text. While the information presented is important in showing the effectiveness of the article, it is also important to consider Dicker’s effort to approach the audience in his article.
The purpose of the article is specifically to inform the audience on how Wal-Mart operates and why they are so important in a time of terrorism. Dicker does a good job when he dissects all of the different ways Wal-Mart is wronging it’s employees, the media, and the government. Throughout the entirety of the article, Dicker conveys his purpose and relates it to his thesis by going in depth and using his logos to back it up. Continually, the ethos Dicker has from his position as a writer for various publications allows his audience to consider his argument seriously. The targeted audience for this article is the general public. Dicker carefully presented his ideas in the article, allowing for the reader to become interested in the topic and to want to continue learning of all the wrongs this company has done them over the years. His ideas are strong, being that the concepts of the article directly affect those in the audience. Presenting this information in a short article most likely presented a challenge to Dicker, however he presented it in a mature fashion and a forceful tone to make sure the audience grasps it. Logos is an area in which Dicker excelled at in this article, as the statistics back up a majority of his points against Wal-Mart. The tone of this article is a casual and peppy one, as …show more content…
he is addressing the general public, he does not get too excited to bash any side of the situation, rather just present the information. His tone makes the article more effective because it makes it more interesting to read. The biggest strength of the article is his addressment of counterarguments and his incorporation of quotes from those at the head of Wal-Mart. Dicker presents oppositional claims towards the end of article and uses them to his advantage. He includes a quote from Lee Scott addressing the complaints the company had been receiving, saying that Wal-Mart was being, “nibbled to death by guppies” (795). This quote furthers the author’s argument tremendously because it is showing the audience that a leader of the company in a distressed state about the negative claims being thrown at the company. Dicker carefully chose this quote to do so. Furthermore, he includes a quote from a PR consultant and industry analyst Paul Holmes, “If you’re company with a budget the size of Wal-Mart and you’re claiming to be misunderstood, it’s pretty pathetic frankly” (795). This quote is very important in conveying the message of the article. Dicker takes a shot at Wal-Mart through this quote, and it shows that Wal-Mart is not good at doing it’s job. Also, he includes many different types of claims within his article discussing the wrongs of Wal-Mart. Firstly, he includes claims of fact when he discusses various statistics regarding employment or wages. These claims indeed further his argument because they build logos. Also they are extremely effective in convincing his audience. Furthermore, he uses claims of value to further the effectiveness of his article. When Dicker explains how Wal-Mart believes that they are giving out good jobs to the people of America, he makes a claim of how, “90 percent of all Wal-Marts and Supercenters built on U.S. soil receive some kind of government subsidy” (792). This claim of value shows that Dicker believes Wal-Mart jobs maybe not be as good as they are portrayed to be. The approach in which Dicker took to reach his audience is surely an effective one, however the effectiveness of the article is further established when analyzing how it was developed.
Development of the article was an important aspect for Dicker. The way in which the thesis is united with the purpose and audience of the article was developed throughout his writing process. The thesis of the article was found within the introduction of Dicker’s article, “The Wall Street Journal has provided some of the most rigorous Wal-Mart coverage, on everything from the company’s healthcare plan to the growing power of its Washington lobby” (789). Dicker’s thesis shows that he will be discussing the various Wal-Mart coverage in the media, and various issues regarding healthcare and its influence on the government. His thesis is effective due to its outline of the article. Continually, his thesis brings the article together, uniting all of his points into one sentence. The organization and structure of the article is developed in a strategic and effective manner as well. Dicker begins the article by grabbing the audience’s attention, and he makes sure he does not lose it when he writes about the way Wal-Mart is taking over mainstream media. Dicker continues off of this point by discussing the way in which Wal-Mart operates, which is described as below average for the employees, while also developing a sense of Pathos. Continually, Dicker mentions how the leaders of the corporation
provide a trustworthy and positive attitude to the media, however when taking a look at wages and employment statistics this positive attitude is not reflected. This point conveys just how far the company will go to get the support of the public so consumers will shop there. Lastly, he closes the argument with how the Wal-Mart story is not pretty and that the store is the big dog in regards to grocery options (795). The development of the article is of high quality and the flow makes for a solid argument. In terms of an effective article, Dicker’s was successful in it’s purpose. The way that he introduced the article showed that this is a relevant topic to discuss with his audience. Continually, the purpose and audience are well selected for the article and are developed with the style of his presentation and information. Furthermore, the development of the article in terms of his thesis and structure of the article prove to be effective due to the natural flow of the piece. John Dicker’s rhetoric in his excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” is effective in terms of showing the importance of the article, approaching his audience, and developing the article to take a stance on the issues Wal-Mart has.
In Deenu Parmar's "Labouring the Wal Mart Way," the author discusses the business practices of Wal Mart, their impact on systemic poverty, and on existing work unions. Their business model forces competition to align with them, or close up shop. Wal Mart hires workers that would usually have a difficult time finding employment. That said, they pay them well below a living wage. Staff are also subject to abuses like overtime without pay. Wal Mart is resolute in their feelings towards unions. Their hiring process designed to cut out union sympathizers. This way, they can prevent any retaliation from staff seeking a better work environment. If anti-union efforts are unsuccessful, they close the store. It also forces existing unions to take pay
Mallaby admits Wal-Mart can treat their employees and other retailers unfairly, but as a result everyone can share in the 50 billion in savings that American shoppers consume annually. The pay that employees get is the price they must pay for low priced merchandise. Because of the minimal pay to employees, Wal-Mart strengthens its’ consumer buying power. Giving the American shoppers the savings they need, Wal-Mart’s has ultimately been them successful. Wal-Mart has potentially wiped out the middle class as an employer, but the employees can now work and ...
The first element of the rhetorical structure and possibly the strongest in this documentary is pathos. Pathos refers to the emotion exhibited throughout the documentary. Food, Inc. is filled with an array of colors, sounds, stories, and images that all appeal to emotion. Miserable images of cows being slaughtered with dark music in the background, pictures of industrial factories with no sun and unhappy workers, and even a depressing and eye-opening home video of a young boy who was killed by the disease as a result of bad food were all portrayed throughout Food, Inc. Barbara Kowalcyk, mother of the late Kevin, is an advocate for establishing food standards with companies throughout the nation. When asked about her sons death, she replied, “To watch this beautiful child go from being perfectly healthy to dead in 12 days-- it was just unbelievable that this could happen from eating food.” (Food, Inc.) Obviously very devastated and still heartbroken over her loss, Kowalcyk fought
Walmart is bad for America, as some say. The Globalization essay that was handed out in class had many good points. It states that Walmart puts many smaller businesses out of service. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employmen...
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
To this day, when I walk into Wal-Mart and come face to face with a manager I once worked under they give me dirty looks. People report that managers will trash talk you to another job that applied for if that job contacts Wal-Mart about you. Wal-Mart has unrealistic workloads for some overnight stockers, their managers aren’t the best in the world, and their policies are harsh. This is why I constantly call Wal-Mart a communist regime; not because it shares the ideals but because it is just bad for everyone in general. Hopefully one day a high positioned power will restore the order and peace that once was Wal-Mart according to the history they teach you in training and that their policies and workloads may become more realistic and doable.
Nearly every American has or had shopped at Wal-Mart at some point or another, and we’ve seen the amount of hassle that many of the workers deal with every time we stand in line to checkout. Long lines during the night while short lines in the very early morning, it sometimes appears as if Wal-Mart’s so-called “associates” never stop working. The use of the word “associates” rather than “workers” strikes a hint of deterioration of their purpose of working—that is to get paid. This label established by the firm that proclaims the importance of equality merely sells itself into its own propaganda by cherishingly slashing wages and worker’s benefits because apparently, they’re not workers, they’re associates. To help hardworking Wal-Mart employees
“What Corporate America Can’t Build: A Sentence”, a newspaper article written by Sam Dillon, addresses corporate America and those in the education system coming into corporate America. The message Dillon conveys to his audience is that there is a problem with the clarity and effectiveness in communication as the work force progresses towards written communication, highlighted by how common emails have become. Dillon’s article strongly influences people in the education system that will soon be entering corporate America, along with those who are already in the workforce. The New York Times author manages to achieved this through his use of statistics that show how harmful
As America’s second largest corporation, largest private employer, and the largest retailer, Wal-Mart always is making the headlines for their wages, benefits, and working conditions. More often than not, these headlines are not the kind Wal-Mart is encouraging. Wal-Mart receives 5,000 lawsuits a year solely because of employee conditions. In an interview with ‘Dan,’ a manager of Wal-Mart stated that he has seen people forced to do heavy-duty work despite being pregnant or having a medical condition that interferes with the task (Figueroa.) The overworked employees are only the beginning of a Wal-Mart epidemic.
Karen Olsson claims that while Wal-Mart is the top retailer in the nation, they do not pay their employees enough to live off of, they deny promotions and equal pay to women, and are too tightly controlled from headquarters in Arkansas to claim ignorance of what is happening in their stores, in her article titled “Up Against Wal-Mart.” Olsson provides facts supporting that Wal-Mart is the top retailer in the nation such as they have $220 billion in sales and their “annual revenues account for 2 percent of America’s entire domestic product.” Olsson also states that Wal-Mart plans to add 800,000 more jobs even though the economy is slowing. Olsson questions a man named Greg Denier who comments that it is impossible to live off of what Wal-Mart pays its
Dicker brings up valid statistics that help give an understanding of just how powerful Wal-Mart actually is including that Wal-Mart employs one out of every 115 American Workers and the business is four times the size of its largest rival (790). He also goes into great detail about many of the issues with Wal-Mart. He talks about not only the many lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart but also the feelings of the workers about their jobs (791-795). Dicker’s article brings up many valid points about the negative aspects of Wal-Mart, however he overlooks the details of how the business manages to stay powerful despite all of the terrible things that are going on and fails to include any benefits that come from
This walmart ad does not say much however what is it telling us. This essay is called a rhetorical essay. That means we will look at this ad and figure out what the writer was thinking when he made it. This will explain how the parts of this add work together to persuade people into shopping at walmart. The words, pictures, and colors have a purpose.
What garnered the negative attention which would lead Wal-Mart into two decades of consumer love-hate relations was primarily two things: 1) It’s national expansion in 1990 which included the consumer watchdog state of California, the heavy union dominated states of Pennsylvania and Nevada and the religious state of Utah and 2) Wal-mart’s expansion of sales items and services such as groceries, eye care, pets and pet supplies, tires, videos, photography processing and studios, fabrics, automotive supplies and much, much, more. The more items Wal-Mart added and the more locations they added them, the more toe’s Wal-Mart stepped on. Eventually, the mumbles of discontent became outcries of unfairness to workers, poor labor practices and negative environmental impact. What started off as a great American success story now had become a monster that needed to be caged or at least
For the thousands of stores that Wal-Mart has around the world, there has to be enough people to cover the positions to keep the store in top shape and running on a daily basis. Wal-Mart is said to be “the nation’s largest private employer, with 3,372 stores and more than 1 million hourly workers” (Olsson 608). Admittedly, Wal-Mart has been found guilty for “systematically forcing employees to work overtime without pay” (Olsson 608). Nonetheless, Wal-Mart showers their full-time workers with benefits including “competitive wages, profit-sharing, 401(k) plans, paid vacations, life insurance, a discount card, medical coverage, disability insurance, scholarship bonuses and child-care discounts” (Hoenig 47). It is true that not all workers for Wal-Mart will be working full-time to obtain the benefits, but employers can work their way up from their part-time positions to a full-time position. Wal-Mart may have some faults as to how their employees are treated, but there wouldn’t be that many people working for Wal-Mart if it was truly that awful. Not only does Wal-Mart provide Americans with jobs, but across the world Wal-Mart supplies jobs to the Chinese. Chinese workers spend their time at factories earning more than they were working elsewhere to make Wal-Mart products. Statistics show that Wal-Mart 's “$12 billion in imports from China last year accounted for a
Walmart’s throughout the United States continue to succeed. Two things that they continue to succeed at is telling the Walmart story in commercials, where we see they continue to lie and “staying the course.” Throughout the documentary they look into struggling families and how Walmart is a big factor in that. The Hunter family ran a hardware store by the name of H&H Hardware and after serving there town for 48 years had to close down due to the arrival of Walmart. Numerous other Mom and Pop businesses will continue to close down due to Walmart and the ability they have to drop sales and also knock the value down on numerous items. Due to most Walmart employees conscious, employees often have to stay late with no overtime pay due to the amount