English 10
Feb. 6Th 2013

Get Back in Your Cave
Essay

Was there ever a time when teenagers and adults got along? A place where there was no fighting, no bickering and no nagging? The article says that if there ever was a place where there was peace, it's long gone now. Is it actually this way or was the writer of the article “Get Back in Your Cave” just using language tricks? They use a lot of sweeping generalization and ridicule to express their bias against teenagers in our society. The way that the author has written the article is not helping the situations and problems that they are complaining about. Complaining about teenagers is not going to want to make them change at all. They used a lot of language tricks such as extreme wording, half truth and name calling to get their point across.
First, I'm going to explain how the writer uses extreme words. These types of language tricks were demonstrated a lot in this article. Extreme words are words that rule out any exceptions. The following is an example of extreme wording “Everyone understands that to be a teenager is to be one part human and nine parts neanderthal.” The writer is using the word everyone and it is making is sound like the whole world agrees with his opinions. The article is using a lot of sweeping generalization. The author of the article “Get Back in Your Cave” shows that all teenagers are the same horrible creatures, but that is not the case i our society. All teenagers like different things and act different ways that it is unfair of the writer to accuse all teenagers for being the same hideous creature. He also wrote, “To preserve you sanity you try to find some beautiful Beethoven... it's a hopeless task.” The author used the word hopeless to make it sound like teenagers were going to take over the world.
Another example of this author's sweeping generalization is how he used half-truth in his article. This type of language trick is when the writer is only telling half or the truth. An example of this would be, “Having grown-up in this unfortunate age, our poor subject thinks he is listening to music.” This quote is an example of half truth because all teenagers like different types of music. Some teens like Country, some like Alternative, and some like Pop and Rap. Whatever music that one