Written Commentary - "Becoming Bi-Cultural Makes You More Creative"

In class, we received a piece titled "Becoming Bi-Cultural Makes You More Creative" written by Art Markman. It was published in an online magazine Psychology Today on August 31st 2012. The purpose of this article is for the writer to communicate that individuals who have resided in more than one country tend to be more inventive as opposed to those who have lived in the same country their entire life. Although it is not particularly an opinion column because the author does not directly state his own perspective, the examples and studies shown indicate that he believes being bi-cultural has a good impact on an individual's creativity. The theme of this piece is basically the value of having been exposed to more than one culture as Markman puts it. The targeted audience of this online article is the readers of Psychology Today which tells us that the author intends to correlate being bi-cultural and creativity in terms of how the mind develops through knowledge of different cultures.

The structure of the online article is similar to that of an ordinary written piece. There are no special techniques in this and the article is simply divided into paragraphs of varying lengths. The author's aim is to inform what studies have shown, and argue using that evidence but without his personal subjectivity. However, it can be understood where his opinion is revealed when he first talks about researchers suggestions that when people are bi-cultural it helps them to see other views on an issue and that integrative complexity lets them be more creative, but then he reiterates it by saying, "after all, being creative often involves seeing things in more than one way" which by the transitive property shows his stance on the subject and his agreement with the research. Another aim of the author is to express that creativity is what makes a business successful and concludes by saying that businesses would flourish if they hired employees that have lived in more than one culture.

The tone of this piece is neutral throughout and there is no word choice that particularly stands out as a strength in this article other than integrative complexity which is also italicized to display the complex composition of their brains after being integrated in more than one culture.