Media Violence - Formal Tone

Unlike the other essay on media violence this article was very short, and just because an essay is short doesn’t mean I am going to think it is better than a 20 page essay, because this essay could have had no content and could have been absolute garbage, but in this case the essay was short and straight to the point. Right away I knew exactly what the author was trying to say and there were no discrepancies.

The article talked about how long ago violence was from the newspapers, and from then on it has gone from being in the newspapers to being on television. The author had a lot of facts and statistics that made his argument a lot more persuasive and believable. For example he talks about how researchers have found that most of the television content was extremely violent. In almost half of the television hours monitored, the main focus on most of them was violence. Another very persuasive fact that the author uses is, “Robert Liebert and Robert baron concluded, in a laboratory situation, that watching a violent program or scene made children more willing to be aggressors.” Therefore overall from all this authors’ stats and facts his content is very well organized, thought out and believable.

The tone of the essay was definitely a formal tone especially after comparing it to the other informal tone argument. This essay definitely seemed a lot more organized and serious than the other informal essay. Some of the reasons why the tone of this essay was formal was because first of all I didn’t notice any contractions, and the author avoided addressing the audience using second person pronouns such as (you, your, etc). The author also avoided using imperative voice which is key in an informal tone but not in this case where the essay is formal. One of the bad things is that formal tone essays usually have longer and more complex sentences, whereas this essay didn’t seem to have well constructed sentences. Overall the author stated his/her points confidently and his opinion was well supported.

The author of the article in the end talks about how even though television violence may contribute to violence, television programs are not to blame completely. There are also a number of other factors that influence the way television affects people; such as their knowledge, interests, positive attitudes, and allowing them to distinguish between right and wrong through actually watching violence. Therefore television is not to blame and we have a responsibility to watch out for our children. The author does make a very good point. Television will always be around, and will definitely not be changing anytime soon so we just need to deal with it.