Rhetorical Analysis Of Michael Pollan's Argument

When Grasses Turn Dormant and When Cattle Are not Ruminant
As one of the forms of writing art, rhetoric usage relies on different genres and emotional appeals to communicate with the audiences and to achieve the goal of persuasion. Successful and effective application of rhetoric skills in an article will make it shine. This paper will focus on the rhetorical choices that Michael Pollan made when he crafts his arguments. To be more specific, this paper will shed light on what rhetoric methods did Michael Pollan use such as various rhetoric appeals, facts, images, word choices, and narratives so as to persuade the audiences to buy his arguments. In general, this paper can be divided into two parts. The first section will deal with the background …show more content…
Evidence and reasons are ample in this article. For one thing, Pollan’s logic is clear when it comes to what should be cattle fed on. He put forward one of the arguments that unlike the modern way of feeding cows, cows should have crazed on green grass which coincides with most of the readers’ accepted value and belief. That claim is supported by his logic reasoning. He elaborated the reciprocal relationship between cows and grass by analyzing the benefits it brought to both sides. Pollan regarded that relationship as a wonder which should have been appreciated. He explained that cows grazed on grass so it would not grow into trees and then cows spread grass seeds(Pollan, 2002). In return, grass provided with cows with plentiful and exclusive meals which are not what the corn and feeds can offer. In addition, the rotational grazing might lead to a prevent the land from becoming too arid or barren. In a word, the author listed all the benefits brought by this ideal system in a logic way. For another, Pollan argued that it was crucial and short-term oriented for modern meat industry to raise cattle on the basis of large volume and low-margin(2002). Pollan proved his argument with statistics from the first hand of the ranch owner: Rich Blair. As Blair(2002) remarked that at his grandfather’s age, it took almost four to five years to send a cow to a butcher and during his father’s time people at least needed two or three years to slaughter a cow, while at present all they had was fourteen month. If anyone considers that as progress, then he or she is wrong because the profits are more than three times lower per head. With those figures, Pollan wanted his readers to have a profound understanding of what fast food culture and stepped-up meat industry had brought about. The results are nothing but