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Rhetorical Analysis Of Jennifer Kahn's Speech

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The world of technology is an ever growing field in which thousands of people work together to advance the human race and share their knowledge in order to inform people across the globe. It is vital that innovators communicate with the public in order for their ideas to gain popularity and so the audience is aware of all aspects of the technology, good and bad. Without the appropriate communicative skills, the technology remains underappreciated, underfunded, and unchecked. Jennifer Kahn, a speaker at Ted Talk, gave a speech and attempted to use these methods in order to clearly convey to her audience her message about gene drives while keeping the audience engaged in her topic. Kahn employed Aristotle’s artistic proof by putting to use ethos, …show more content…

Kahn accomplished this by actively returning to the idea of whether or not gene editing is ethical and by specifically addressing the concerns of gene editing in a balanced manner. In order to establish good moral character, Kahn talks about malaria and the possible benefits gene editing could have in order to prevent malaria outbreaks. She states that gene editing could “virtually eliminate malaria” and that could effectively save the lives of many. The fact that she is interested in the lives that could be saved by gene editing shows the audience that Kahn has good morals and is essentially cared about a good cause rather than just for the pursuit of science. Additionally, as Kahn is persuading the audience towards the use of gene editing in a positive way, she still explains that gene editing is “also a somewhat alarming new tool.” By putting forth the potential dangers of gene editing, Kahn is able to put the audience at ease because the understand that she is taking into account the ethical aspects of gene editing. This ties into Kahn’s goodwill because it portrays her as individuals who cares how this will effect humanity and therefore how it will effect the audience as well. Kahn establishes both good moral character and goodwill which contribute to the overall persuasion of her

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