By the due date assigned, post your initial response to the Discussion Area. Post directly to the discussion thread; do not attach a document. If you have composed your remarks in Microsoft Word, copy and paste your response into your discussion post. By the end of week, comment on at least two of your classmates’ submissions. Your replies to classmates should be made with an eye to expand, clarify, defend, and refine their thoughts.

Prompt:

Our textbook provides two passages that are meant to persuade an audience to act against climate change; one reading is by Reverend Jim Ball and one is by the Sierra Club, an environmental group. Read Passages 1 and 2 in the textbox titled “FOR CLASS DISCUSSION: An Initial Exercise in Rhetorical Analysis” on page 158 of our online textbook.

In a well-developed paragraph of at least 150 words, incorporating and using in-text citations to document examples from our readings, respond to one of the questions below:

1. How do the strategies of persuasion differ in these two passages? Explain these differences in terms of targeted audience, original genre, writer’s purpose, and writer’s angle of vision.

2. How would you describe the writer’s style in each? What is the purpose of each, and how does the author achieve the aims of the argument?

3. How effective would either argument be for readers outside the intended audience? What changes would Reverend Ball’s argument require to be effective outside a Christian religious context? What information would help the Sierra Club’s argument work outside the context of an environmentalist group?

References

Ball, J. (2012) It’s kairos time for climate change: Time to act. In J. Ramage, J Bean & J. Johnson (Eds.). Writing arguments: A rhetoric with readings. (p. 158). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Sierra Club. (2012). Global warning policy solutions. In J. Ramage, J. Bean & J. Johnson (Eds.) Writing arguments: A rhetoric with readings (p. 158) Boston, MA: Pearson.