After reading several editorials an opinion pieces, I realized that they attempt to persuade very specific audiences with either ethos or pathos. Such texts do not include a lot of logos, and most of these texts only defend one side and heavily criticize that which they disagree with.
For instance, a clear example of these opinion pieces being very supportive of their argument while criticizing opposing points of view is the text called Liberals are the Sort of People Who..., in which the author, John Hawkins appeals to his intended audience's pathos and lacks statistics and facts that actually proof his perspective on liberals. As I am not very familiar with politics, I do not want to project a sort of pro-liberal perspective, however, the way this author establishes his claims is extremely biased, moreover, it does not use solid evidence to back up many of his claims.
In addition to noticing that editorials and opinion pieces lack logos, the language that it is used is not too formal, it is a bit casual and appeal mostly to audience's feelings.
Authors make themselves look believable by pointing out observations that may predict a certain outcome.
These genres are different from other genres I have previously been exposed in academia since they utilize less facts and logos. It almost feels as if these genres were a blog, except they are a little bit more formal.
The opinion pieces that I just read, as I stated in the beginning, only consider one point of view, which may appear as not too credible by those who oppose the author's ideas.
The JSTOR Daily is different since it uses a lot of academic citations but nonetheless is not extremely formal, and it also uses a lot of pathos. This genre reinforces relevant occurrences and I think it is only offered online, ad opposed to newspapers and other types of genres.
Overall, I notices that most opinion pieces and JSTOR Daily works focus on one single ideology while criticizing points of view that contradict their ideas, which in my opinion, allows audiences to discuss their own ideas.
Hello Marco,
ReplyDeleteI did not get to read that editorial but, coming from you, John Hawkins does sound pretty unprofessional, even though it is a purely opinion based editorial. He should have some reason behind his opinions or at least try to explain it even if he has to appeal to logic or emotions. Reading Op-Eds was a new experience for me to read as well because I did not even know what that meant. The Op-Ed I did read was showing only one side of the argument but, it seemed less like a blog.
-Lisset Perales