Same-Sex Adoption

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Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, through which the party doing the persuading uses in order to appeal to their target or the audience. Rhetorical appeals are the strategies one uses to support a claim or argument, in order to persuade someone to agree with what is being argued; and in turn the appeals can be used when responding to any opposing views. In any piece of good writing, all three appeals are present. In “Lesbian and Gay Adoption,” Annette R. Appell is discussing the different ways homosexuals have chosen to go about having children, with adoption being the topic of discussion. She is an Associate Professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada. Appell opens her article by using the emotional appeal, pathos. This enables her to grasp her audience’s attention right away. Although her reputation takes a hit due to the lack of a thesis statement, her occupation saves her when attempting to establish credibility. She uses her background in law to provide the reader with the legal obstacles homosexuals have had to overcome and those they cannot seem to get over when it comes to adopting which is a major way she establishes her credibility or ethos. Evaluating the definitions of certain legal terms and then interpreting them using her own words incorporates logos into the article. All of the forms of rhetoric are present in this article and they have effectively been put to use.

Pathos appeals to one’s softer side. A prime example of pathos are the adopt a pet commercials on TV, the radio, and now, there are pop up ads on the internet. The advertisers get a helpless animal, get some actor with a soft, compassionate voice to tell the story, and cap it off with the saddest song in the history of ...

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... literature in order to avoid being manipulated by the author. Seeing how authors use these appeals in order to persuade an audience that what they are saying or arguing about is worth agreeing with. Having a homosexual family member that is looking into adoption and not having a full understanding of the rhetorical appeals are the reasons for analyzing this specific article. Seeing how Appell chose to put each appeal to use in order to persuade her audience satisfied the missing pieces to being completely aware of them and how they are incorporated by an author. All in all, after gaining an in depth understanding of the three principles it has become much easier to put the rhetorical appeals to use when going over a piece of writing

Works Cited

Annette R. Appell. “Legal Intersections: Lesbian and Gay Adoption.” Adoption Quarterly 4.3 (2001): 75-86. Print.

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