Obama Email

To understand the importance of the email you first have to know who Barack Obama is. The email that Barack Obama sent suggests that he knows you. It is addressed to you as a friend and asking you to donate money.  The real-world situations in the email inform us that he is addressing you directly and wanting you to donate money. The email also includes information on who the email is from and who it is addressed to. It then gives you a link to go to if you wish to donate money to him. The email is very short and neat and set up as an announcement where it gets right to the point and the sentence sounds like a statement. If you were addressing a friend there would be more emotion to the words whereas the email has no tone. The email never does say where the money is going to it just gives you a link to the site. It does however; tell you that you must do it tonight.

The email says that it is Barack Obama who wrote the letter but that is obviously not the case since it is unlikely that he would have your email address and address you directly. From the email it is hard to tell who the author actually is since it gets right to the point and lacks emotion but what we do know is that he supports Obama. Since the email is addressed to Marla Jarmer, she is the implied audience of the email. From the tone and text of the email you can tell that anybody reading is the intended audience. The email captures the audiences’ eye by showing that it is from Barack Obama and who wouldn’t open an email from the President. When it uses the person’s name and addresses them as a friend it makes them want to keep looking on to at least see what the email is about. The first sentence of the email then keeps the audience reading on because it indicates that there is a change and something important is going on that needs their attention.  Since the email lacks information to what the money is being used for and that it is unlikely that Barack Obama even sent the email it is safe to say the email is a scam. Even though the email is short and lacks certain information it can still analyzed rhetorically.

-Megan Grimes (406 Words)