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Up From Ugliness

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/douthat-up-from-ugliness.html?_r=1&ref=opinion 

 In this New York Times article, the author talks about the effects of Steve Jobs on society. He effectively uses, details, diction, and imagery to get his point across that Steve Jobs played a huge role in shaping society today. 

The author uses very descriptive imagery to describe the world today and how Steve Jobs changed it for the better. He uses words such as "We wore leisure suits and shoulder pads, buried heart-of-pine floors under shag carpeting, and paneled our automobiles with artificial wood," (Douthat). This mostly appeals to the sense of sight and effectively gets a good picture across allowing the reader to get a good picture in their heads. He uses many descriptions like this, talking about the world in a pejorative sense, and then he comes in with Steve Jobs and the piece takes a whole different approach with better, brighter imagery, showing that Steve Jobs changed the world for the better. 

This author also uses diction to get his point across. He uses many words that do a fantastic job of getting his point across, even though they are not generally commonly used words. He uses words such as "junk architecture," and "new urbanist." These saying do a great job getting his point across, which shows that he clearly used proper diction in this piece. 

He also uses a great amount of details to get his point across. Once again going back to the imagery point, when he describes the world, which he does for the majority of this piece, he uses great amounts of imagery and details to explains his points. He uses phrases such as "ziggurats of cement," which are details that are not crucial to the story but are added anyway as additional details to help prove his point.