Critical Essay: Eva Derzic's Perspective on Communication

Introduction

As stated by Eva Derzic, writing of letters is a common platform of conveying information from one person to another. Furthermore, letter writing entails different messages that are meant to be received by certain people. Nonetheless, Eva Derzic asserts that although letter writing is one of the most convenient ways of communicating, some individuals who have desisted from writing letters and opted to use other means of communication. Consequently, this paper will elucidate a summary on Eva Derzic's essay and her appeal to rhetoric trio of ethos, logos, and pathos.

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Summary of Eva Derzic's Essay

About Eva Derzic's famous essay known as in defense of writing letters, she emphasizes that writing of letters is an art that seems to be vanishing (Bullock, Richard Harvey, Maureen Daly Goggin & Francine, p. 804). Nonetheless, Eva Derzic provides reasons to as why she thinks letter writing is a dying art. Firstly, Eva Derzic asserts that majority of the people are living in a digital age and are captivated by speed as wells modern technologies.

Moreover, many people would not be bothered to read letters for the apparent reason that they can get news specifically from tweets. Nevertheless, Eva Derzic further states that in the modern society majority of the people do not like chatting with their friends but instead they prefer to spend much time stalking them on different platforms of social media for instance Facebook. Writing of letters was considered to be a convenient way of communicating with friends and relatives especially in the 90s, but later on people started to use mobile phones to converse. Therefore, new technologies, particularly in the communication sector, have been adopted, and people are using various platforms to communicate in comparison to writing letters.

Eva Derzic's Appeal to the Rhetoric Trio'' of Ethos, Logos and Pathos

Ethos, pathos, and logos are regarded as modes of persuasion that are mostly used to persuade audiences. Similarly, ethos is also known as the ethical appeal and is mostly entails convincing audiences about the credibility of an author. Authors use ethos in order to demonstrate to his/ her audience that he is a reliable source. Pathos means to persuade addressees by alluring to their sensations. On the other hand, logos entail convincing an audience by using reason and logic. Furthermore, Eva Derzic uses logos, pathos, and ethos to persuade audiences why she still thinks that people should still write letters.

Firstly, Eva Derzic proclaims that letter writing indeed takes time. In order to compose a good letter, then individuals are supposed to disengage themselves from the modern digital world by remembering that there is life outside the modern technologies. Moreover, Eva Derzic asserts that a good and a thoughtful letter cannot be written in few minutes hence producing a perfect letter that a recipient will yearn to read entails sitting and taking your time, "And because it takes so much time, it shows that you truly do think and care about the recipient". (Derzic, pg. 804)

Furthermore, Eva Derzic persuades audiences that people should still write letters, especially when she states that writing of letters is regarded as mental exercise. For instance, individuals can still write perfect letters to their preferred recipients via email. However, there is a critical difference between writing letters on papers and using computers to draft a message. Computers have options such as delete buttons which make it possible for someone to rectify errors when writing messages. On the other hand, when writing letters mainly using a paper and a pen, it is considered to be a messy and unpleasant process it is hard to make corrections to already written message. Therefore, individuals will always strive hard to make sure that they get facts right.

Thirdly, Eva Derzic's appeal to pathos, logos, and ethos is also evident specifically when she states that takes some time before a letter finally reaches the intended recipient as well as time factor is taken into consideration for the apparent reason that it equally takes superfluous tie for recipients to write a reply. However, after sending a letter to the right recipient, one is not assured of an immediate endorsement of receiving, response or an instantaneous "THANK YOU! YOU'RE AN AWESOME PERSON FOR DOING THIS!" (Derzic, pg. 806). Moreover, it depends on the destination hence this can be few weeks or even few days.

According to Eva Derzic, letter writing is the best way of demonstrating that you care about the recipient although it takes much time to draft a letter. Furthermore, she maintains that there are different groups of people who view letter writing as old fashioned and inconvenient due to the developments in modern society. However, Eva Derzic continues to persuade people to write letters since there is life outside the digital world.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is worth noting Eva Derzic's appeal to the rhetoric trio of logos, ethos, and pathos is evident in her famous essay titled in defense of writing letters. Specifically, Eva Derzic proclaims that even though letter writing is a process characterized as time consuming and old fashioned way of conveying information, writing of letters still has a place in the digital world.

Work Cited

Derzic, Eva. "In Defense Of Writing Letters," The Norton field guide to writing. WW Norton, 2013.