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Essay about Classical Principles or Arguementation

Decent Essays

Classical Principles of Argumentation

In the essay “Reminders of Poverty, Soon Forgotten” the author Alexander Keyssar uses classical principles of argumentation. He uses ethos, which is the character of the speaker; he uses logos, which is an appeal based on logic or reason; and he uses pathos, which is an appeal based on emotions. His piece is over poverty and what came from Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath for the people. He also discusses what other events in history have contributed to poverty, and how nothing is being done about it by the government.
He begins in part 1 using pathos, “ There they were on our television screens, the storm’s most desperate victims- disproportionately poor and black, wading through muddy water, …show more content…

Part 8, “Disasters and crises in American history have, in fact, rarely produced any fundamental changes in economic or social policy. Natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fire, are invariably local events, leaving to much of the nation unscathed to generate any broad-gauged shift in understanding or ideology.” This appeal is being made on logic meaning there hasn’t been a change in the policies on the economic or social levels regarding natural disasters.” Part 11, “The long post-Civil War downturn of the 1870’s, for example, toppled millions of people into destitution or near-destitution; arguably the first depression of the industrial era…” The author is making this appeal to show poverty after the civil war, could have been the first depression of the industrial era. Part 24, “But there will be no national programs to aid the poor, and precious little in the way of targeted antipoverty programs in the gulf.” This appeal is to show that there is nothing that has been done to help the poor in the gulf, even after this disaster that shed light on just how bad the situation was.
In part 7 the principle ethos comes in when the author writes “As a historian- and one who has taught and written about the history of poverty in the United States- I should not have been surprised by the quick

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