Rhetorical Analysis of Video Game Violence Essay

In my most recent essay I wrote of the violence attributed to video games in light of various shootings and other tragedies that occurred in the past year or so. In this essay I argued that despite their violent content, video games are not completely to blame for acts of violence committed by children. Throughout this essay I tried to convince the reader by, first, establishing my own credibility with video games, then sharing my own experiences with violent games, and providing both empirical data and valuable insight from trusted sources. In identifying my target audience, the reader must first ignore the fact that this was written for my English professor, and imply that it was meant to be written for a blog on the internet so that its location could be accessed by all groups equally, and so that everything inferred about the essay comes from what the essay gives. Considering that the writer is a teenage male, who plays video games and believes that video games are not the cause of violence in children, we could say that I’m writing to arm fellow teenagers regarding the issue. I feel that my target audience should have been parents and other concerned adults who could use this information when buying their kids video games, or voting for something that had anything to do with censoring or banning video games. Although adults and parents should have been my target audience I feel that the essay may not have influenced their opinion regarding video games due to my sarcastic tone when asking rhetorical questions, my absurd comparisons with regard to any opinions that were contrary to my own, and my inability to yield any credit to evidence that disagreed with my position. I may have alienated possible converts to my side of the argument by arguing in a childish manner. So the target audience may have been the adults but, based on my style of writing, the only affected parties may be the teenagers who already agreed with my position. I opened my essay