Why I Use Trigger Warnings By Kate Manne

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Why I Now Believe In Using Trigger Warnings: A Rhetorical Analysis
“Why I Use Trigger Warnings” by Kate Manne was published two weeks ago to The New York Times’ Sunday Review Opinion section. She writes in response to the September cover story of The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt who discuss the movement of “coddling” American college students by their own request. Manne takes one of the aspects that they target and explains why she believes that trigger warnings are an effective part of creating a powerful learning environment. However, she also writes to influence her fellow collegiate professors so that they might better understand the tool of trigger warnings in the context of curriculum. Manne’s use of rhetorical devices
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To avoid this, Manne uses the trigger warnings to remove such a risk. Therefore, trigger warnings are not the shield that Lukianoff and Haidt make them out to be. Instead, they become an educational tool to make the classroom a safer, more conscientious, and more accessible place for all students to learn, discuss, and grow.
Manne’s use of ethos in the article can be explored through her tone, clear purpose, knowledge, and her awareness of her audience. Her stance or tone in the article is an educational one- she wants to teach her audience about the usefulness of trigger warnings bring to the classroom and her students. This makes her purpose clear and adds credibility to her argument. In the Atlantic article, Lukianoff and Haidt attack countless instruments of “coddling”, however, Manne wrote in response to only one item under attack: trigger warnings. This gave Manne the ability to focus on one topic and discuss the topic in depth. If she had attempted to address the
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From her educational tone, Manne explains the purpose and history of trigger warnings- and how simple they are to implement- making her argument to be a fairly logical one. The use of a clear purpose in the article, because it allows for Manne to focus only on trigger warnings, makes it seems again, like the logical thing to do. If Manne had had responded to all of Lukianoff’s and Haidt’s points, her argument would have been weaker and the logos would have been lost. Because Manne already has background knowledge in trigger warnings, she has a better understanding of their usage and their context. She is able to better argue this subject because she truly believes that it is the logical thing to do, so that is how she presents her argument: as though it is the logical thing to

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