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Gary Slutkin Rhetoric Essay

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When it comes to writing and speaking, there are many aspects that make up sophisticated rhetoric. There is the rhetorical triangle and the rhetorical appeals. The rhetorical triangle demonstrates who the author is, who the audience is, and what the purpose is. The rhetorical appeals are pathos, ethos, and logos. All of these together are core components. Gary Slutkin gave an argument at a TED talk titled Let’s treat violence like a contagious disease, and during his talk he exemplified rhetorical erudition. Slutkin is an epidemiologist, the founder of Cure Violence, and a physician trained in infectious diseases (Slutkin). All of these show his ethos. He is a man of great character that wants less violence. He is the author of this speech, …show more content…

His background is in studying patterns. During the lecture, there were slides of graphs that plotted out the course of homicides and the flu and pneumonia. Both graphed showed similar characteristics. Violence leads to more violence, and disease leads to more disease (Slutkin). He was able to connect disease and violence, which displays his logos. His pathos was demonstrated in his lecture, when he went into the story of women wailing and crying (Slutkin). Slutkin sounded monotone, but it still sounded sad. People were dying over disease that should have been prevented. The audience was emotionally invested. Everything’s an argument suggest to identify the target audience (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, 96). Slutkin was informing all the humans on the planet to join the cause of ending violence. At first, he was targeting violent areas in America, but Cure Violence got so big that countries started adapting the program, because of the success. The findings stated that gun shootings would drop from 40 to 70 percent (Slutkin). He clearly identifies his purpose as wanting to reverse the epidemics. He wishes to better the world, and make a difference. Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz declares that

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