Overall Claim: "The language of Starbucks aims to seduce us with comfort, romance us with relationships, and assure us that we are all working together for the good of the underprivileged" (Ruzich 440). This comment in the last paragraph of the article sums up the whole paper and states exactly what the point of the paper was, making it my choice as the overall claim. Her point was that Starbuck's use of language and sense of romance/ comfort is what put them ahead of many other similar coffee companies.
Sources: Ruzich did a great job incorporating a variety of sources into her article. A majority of her sources were scholarly articles, which proves the information she used was legitimate. Examples of scholarly articles were, "Hot Starbucks to Go" and "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World." Both of these were used numerous times throughout the article, which reassures they were good sources. Along with scholarly articles, she also used a variety of direct reference material from the Starbucks Corporation. The article was filled with quotes pulled from Starbucks brochures to promotional signs. Her use of these sources provided proof that Starbucks image was meant to be very comforting and relaxing.
Reasoning for Sources: To start out the article, Ruzich used a variety of what seemed to be scholarly, historical (especially Pendergast) sources about the history of coffee and how it became what is it today. This provided readers with insight, before reading the main material. The rest of the article focuses on her main claim of Starbucks being a company focused on promoting more than just coffee. Her use of the sources (Pendergast) and (Koehn) extend her main claim by giving examples of competing companies' advertisements and contrasting them to Starbucks. Then, a combination of scholarly articles and Starbuck's brochures/ signs provide quotes showing Starbuck's intended image to the public. For example the quote "We trust you, help us choose" (Ruzich 435), was explaining how Starbucks allowed customers to provide requests for in-store music.
Thoughts: I felt Ruzich did a great job on the article. It was quite amazing the she used 29 sources in a 12-page paper. Her use of so much scholarly information proved her main claim and she wrote it well. I understood her opinion about Starbucks and their image.
I am glad that you liked this article; it's always one of my favorites to teach. We will talk more about this essay and her strategies in class, especially how the sources relate to her main claim.
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