American Needs Nerds

In the passage “ America Needs its Nerds”, author Leonid Fridman pulls out evidence to proclaim his argument on America ongoing social belief, perceptions of the geek, and the actual positive role taken by the nerd and why the role that they play is vital to our society. The way in which Fridman structures his argument, uses descriptive examples, and employs rhetorical strategy to contribute to the strength of the argument. To make a strong argument he introduces a statement to show his opinion.Fidman starts off by stating”There is … academically serious” this shows his authoritative tone, to make him sound more assertive. He backs up his claim to show what’s wrong with the system of American by defining the meaning of “geek” this shows the missusage on those respected to the purpose of knowledge.

He then brings up “geek’ in dictionary terms is a chicken head biting freak, but in modern day terms it is not, he does this to differentiate the two in order to make the reader realize how insulting it is to label academically motivated people as “geeks.” He shows more specific example on why American society has such strong anti­intellectualism: fear of being oxidized by society elites, he bring up athletes that are popular students. Fridman makes a sharp contrast between students who partly/play football and students who build airplanes/read last week he makes this comparison to allow the reader to see the significance on the word “nerds” and “geeks” the society.