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Running Head: Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical Analysis
Bianca Arciniega
University of Texas at El Paso
Spring 2014











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Running Head: Rhetorical Analysis



Gay marriage can be a tough subject to write an article about to help persuade a reader in
thinking in the same way as the author. This topic is relevant now due to the U.S having some
states legalizing gay marriage and other banning it. It is in headlines across the nation so this
topic still has importance now. The main idea of this article is how gay marriage is viewed at by
different types of people and how the homosexual community should go about trying to win
people over so gay marriage is legalized everywhere. Analyzing this article by showing how the
author conducts his research and how using pathos, logos and ethos can help the topic.
The purpose of this article is to show the topic at hand and see how authors view gay
marriage and how they either defend or attack it. The author does not attack gay marriage in this
article, he simply states how gay marriage and adoption go hand in hand with this topic. The
author shows how people view it in different age group and between females and males. The
author states why some people would be in support of gay marriage and why others would not be
in favor. The author teaches the readers as to why some people would be against it and why
others would be in support. The intended audience is those who are in the LGBT community as
well as others who support it. This article shows how to pull more people in support for gay
marriage and adoption. The values that audience has is the one who believes in equality but as
well knows of the other bases of people who are against it. So the audience can hold values in
religious views so they can take their perspective into account as to why some people who go to
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Running Head: Rhetorical Analysis



religious places would not view gay marriage and adoption the same as a person who does not.
Secondary audiences can be those who are opposed to it and can see if they match any qualities
that the ones who did not agree to it in the study the author took.
The author is Joseph Schwartz Ph.D, has some credibility being that he has a Ph.D. In
the introduction page, the author tells the audience what school he went to and what he studied.
In the article he wrote, he comes across as knowledgable. For example
Using pathos is not very clear in this article. The author uses very little emotion in this
article due to how much logos he uses and how he connects using other methods. He connects to
the audience by using real life people and stating on how they tested and why they are all
different.
Logos is clear because the author uses a lot of diagrams, charts in the article to show what
the difference of the peoples results look like.






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Running Head: Rhetorical Analysis



References
Schwartz, J. (2010). Investigating differences in public support for gay rights issues. Journal of
Homosexuality, 57(6), 748-759. doi:10.1080/00918369.2010.485875