Rhetorical Strategies

Gerald Lappay

RWS 100

Professor Werry

October 27, 2014

Rhetorical Strategies

Parry's "Branding a Condition": I'm hooked onto Parry's use of exemplification in his article, particularly the one he uses with Listerine. It's almost like he's [informally saying]:

      "Let me explain "condition branding" to you. You know that one product you've probably used at least once in your lifetime? Listerine? Yeah, funny story about that. Warner-Lambert, the guy who invented Listerine, initially made Listerine to cure a slew of things. Well, that was a bust. Then this fancy-yet-scary word came about: halitosis. Sounds scary, right? Like some kind of super-life-threatening-Ebola-tier stuff. Well it just means bad breath. So what'd Warner-Lambert do? He flipped the switch on Listerine and called it "THE CURE FOR ALL HALITOSIS". Listerine became a hit, and now it's in shelves all over the place."

While this is super-informal, that's how powerful exemplification can be.

Rifkin's "Change of Heart about Animals": Rifkin called upon a few big names of the food industry in his article -- and calling out big industry is rhetorical strategy. When McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC -- thought to be money making, animal slaughtering, whatever-have-you industries support research on the animals they kill, that raises some interest. It's a pretty powerful rhetorical strategy, it hit me when I first read this article, and it hit me again the second time.