Gonzalez Karoline Gonzalez Mrs.

Lahaise AP Language and Composition 28 October 2012

Columnist Essay

Gregory Rodriguez, a very successful writer for the LA times has been the columnist that I have chosen for his great sense of persuasion and interesting topics. His topics range from what I believe is what is recently trending. For example What Twitter can't tell you is an article that talks about how technology is changing peoples' social lives, Bringing out our inner bear is about the bear roaming through Glendale and how we fear them for no apparent reason, although they fear us more. The last article was New wave of immigrants a new target too? where he talks about Chinese immigrants and the high wealthy success among that race. So throughout all of the articles I've read the main topics I have noticed are How people react to certain changes,events and/or people. Now I mentioned earlier that he is a persuasive writer, using rhetoric, he convinces his audience about what he talks about. One of the main components that he uses are Pathos, he uses a lot of emotion to convey the reader to understand the topic better. For example in New wave of immigrants a new target too? he uses pathos, Last week saw the 30th anniversary of the killing of Vincent Chin, a
Chinese American in Michigan who died after he was beaten by two out-of-work autoworkers.. In What Twitter Can't Tell you; I didn't get close enough to see more, except that upon hearing the sirens approaching, the woman on the ground was whisked into a car and all three sped away before two ambulances and a police car arrived. A second device that Rodriguez uses is tone, he varies from having a didactic tone to a very sarcastic tone, for example in New wave of immigrants a new target too? he uses the following phrase It's official! A new study by the Pew Research Center proves the old trope true: Asians are the new Jews. But later in his article write this In 1959, the Indonesian government implemented anti-Chinese legislation that forced Chinese merchants to abandon their businesses. In 1973, a riot in West

Gonzalez
Java led to the looting and destruction of more than 1,500 Chinese Indonesian-owned shops and houses. In 1998, as Indonesia's economy imploded amid the broader Asian financial crisis, rioting with a strong antiChinese element took the lives of at least 1,000 people, costing $250 million in damages. His style of using tone is mostly always either didactic or sarcastic. The last device that I have noticed Rodriguez use more often is epiphany, by this I mean that in the beginning of his writing he doesn't know something or realize it until the end of what he is writing for example in his article What Twitter Can't Tell you He starts of with a scenario and by the end of his article comes out with his thesis statement which is I realized that as connected as we are, this digital revolution cannot suddenly crack all the many barriers language, culture, kinship, to name a few that keep humans apart. As a first time reader of Rodriguez work I have enjoyed the time I have spent with his work, through rough analyzes I have began to learn how rhetoric can change a whole article for example by using pathos you can convey a reader to feel sentimental or some kind of either negative or positive emotion which might lead him/her to be convinced by the argument. Tone is a effect persuasive device because it adds a certain emphasize on how you as the writer feels whether your serious or sarcastic or laughing, you tine will show the reader how to feel guided by your tone. Overall Rodriquez was an excellent writer who always convey his point across in effective ways.