preview

Writing2 WP1

Good Essays

Nick Cucco Jonathon Forbes Writing 2 13 September 2014 Opinionated Articles, Presidential Speeches, and Gun Control: Comparing Two Different Genres of Writing In the United States, the media tends to only highlight violence that is occurring overseas when in reality gun violence has escalated to new heights in our own country. During recent years, gun-related homicides have plagued the United States, and many innocent citizens have been killed due to this accumulation of gun violence. Because gun control is a very controversial topic, writers who choose to address this emotional topic must use the appropriate tone when forming their arguments in order to better persuade their audience. Recently, Nicholas Kristof and President Obama …show more content…

People kill people.” Many republicans, who are against gun regulations, argue that guns don’t kill people and that people kill people in an attempt to prove that regulating guns doesn’t change the aggressive nature of some individuals. Kristof refutes this claim by, again, comparing guns to cars and by explaining that although sometimes drivers are responsible for crashes, this does not mean that we should inhibit regulations that will help reduce the numbers of deaths that occur due to car accidents. The authors condescending tone and comparisons to car regulation not only help him refute many of the claims that republicans make against gun control, but they also help shows the reader that republicans are hypocritical when it comes to regulations and that they, in fact, were supportive of certain types of regulation which ended up saving millions of people. Because his article is published in the Opinion Pages of the New York Times, a sector of the New York Times that is loaded with opinionated articles written by the public, Kristof is able to use informal language, a condescending tone, and metaphors throughout his work in order to successfully convey his message and persuade his readers. The fact that Kristof knows his audience and the conventions of his genre is very important because if he had been writing

Get Access