Passage 1 As I sit down to write this column, one thing keeps coming to me over and over: Now is the time; now is the time.? In the New Testament the word used for this type of time

WEEEK 2: TUTORIAL

RHETORIC: ANALYSIZING AUDIENCE

In the following exercise, consider the strategies used by two different writers to persuade their

audiences to act to stop climate change. The first is from the opening paragraphs of an editorial

in the magazine Creation Care: A Christian Environmental Quarterly. The second is from the

website of the Sierra Club, an environmental action group.

Individual task:

Read the following passages carefully, and then write out your exploratory answers to the

questions that follow. Refer to Table 7.2, “Questions for Rhetorical Analysis,” to help you

examine how these texts’ key features contribute to their impact on readers.

Passage 1

As I sit down to write this column, one thing keeps coming to me over and over: “Now is the

time; now is the time.”

In the New Testament the word used for this type of time is kairos. It means “right or

opportune moment.” It is contrasted with chronos, or chronological time as measured in

seconds, days, months, or years. In the New Testament kairos is usually associated with

decisive action that brings about deliverance or salvation.

The reason the phrase, “Now is the time” kept coming to me over and over is that I was

thinking of how to describe our current climate change moment.

The world has been plodding along in chronological time on the problem of climate

change since around 1988. No more.

Simply put: the problem of climate change has entered kairos time; its kairos moment

has arrived. How long will it endure? Until the time of decisive action to bring about

deliverance comes—or, more ominously, until the time when the opportunity for decisive

action has passed us by. Which will we choose? Because we do have a choice.

—Rev. Jim Ball, Ph.D., “It’s Kairos Time for Climate Change: Time to Act,” Creation Care: A

Christian Environmental Quarterly (Summer 2008), 28.

Passage 2

[Another action that Americans must take to combat global warming is to transition] to a clean-

energy economy in a just and equitable way. Global warming is among the greatest challenges

of our time, but also presents extraordinary opportunities to harness home-grown clean energy

sources and encourage technological innovation. These bold shifts toward a clean energy future

can create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and generate billions of dollars in capital

investment. But in order to maximize these benefits across all sectors of our society,

comprehensive global warming legislation must auction emission allowances to polluters and

use these public assets for public benefit programs.

Such programs include financial assistance to help low and moderate-income

consumers and workers offset higher energy costs as well as programs that assist with

adaptation efforts in communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Revenue

generated from emissions allowances should also aid the expansion of renewable and efficient

energy technologies that quickly, cleanly, cheaply, and safely reduce our dependence on fossil

fuels and curb global warming. Lastly, it is absolutely vital that comprehensive global warming

legislation not preempt state authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively than

mandated by federal legislation.

—Sierra Club, “Global Warming Policy Solutions,” 2008, http://www.sierraclub.org/

QUESTIONS:

1. How do the strategies of persuasion differ in these two passages? Explain these

differences in terms of targeted audience, original genre, writer’s purpose, and

writer’s angle of vision.

2. How would you describe the relationship between logos and pathos in each text?

3. How would you describe the writer’s style in each?

4. How effective would either argument be for readers outside the intended audience?