When He Says Yoga Saved His Life Rhetorical Analysis

Journalist, Marc Silver, in his article, When He Says Yoga Saved His Life, He’s Not Exaggerating, informs the audience of how yoga saved a young man’s life. Silver’s article appeals of pathos and ethos effectively to capture his audience’s attention and inform them about how something that could be done in everyday life can help determine how one’s life turns out in different areas of the world. This essay will examine and evaluate the way Silver uses the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos to inform his audience about a young man’s life and yoga. It will also examine and evaluate how Silver does not use the appeal of logos in his article and how it could have helped with capturing the reader’s attention.
First off, Silver uses the first …show more content…
Ethos is stated to be “a method of persuasion in which the speaker or writer attempts to persuade the audience by demonstrating his/her credibility or authority” (McKee & McIntyre 2015 para. 3). There is one example that Silver uses to help add credibility to article. He adds the name, Paige Elenson, to show that he is able to use his sources properly. Paige Elenson is “the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Africa Yoga Project” (Unknown 2015 para. 2). This helps let the reader know that the writer knows how to use and properly cite information. Other than this, he does not have any information on who he is or what type of writer he is. There is only his name and a sub-link which leads to his other articles that he has written. His citation of Paige and the Africa Yoga Project was used in order to let the readers know that Walter Mugbe’s life really happened and what he went through the …show more content…
Logos refers to “the consistency and clarity of an argument as well as the logic of evidence and reasons” (Lane, McKee, & McIntyre 2015 para. 1). Silver does not use statistics or data to help support the information he has already wrote about Walter’s life and yoga or add new angles to his article. If Silver had used just a bit of logos, the article would have been more capturing to the audience and kept them interested in the reading. If he had used data or statistics about how yoga affects a human’s state of mind or how many people in Africa had changed from starting yoga, the audience would have been, if not, more interested in how yoga could save someone’s life. They would have wanted to know how something that can be done in everyday life could affect people in that type of way. Data would have helped solidify the sense that yoga is something helpful to people when they are in