The first article, “Wake Up Australia. Barnaby Joyce can make us great again,” written by Miranda Devine is a subjective written piece, in obvious bias towards Barnaby Joyce’s political views and actions. Devine’s contention is to reinforce Barnaby Joyce’s greatness as a political leader, by using persuasive techniques of the rhetorical topic of relationship, testimony and a combination of the three rhetoric proofs; mainly ethos and logos.
The rhetorical topic of relationship is a persuasive technique used even in the title, which creates a cause and effect relationship, stating that Australia can be made “great again,” just like how Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was to “Make America Great Again.” Through this use, Devine additionally introducing Barnaby Joyce as “Australia’s Donald Trump”, effectively leads the reader to be led to think of Barnaby as a strong and powerful individual, relating him to successful businessmen and now president-elect of the United States of America. The persuasive piece also depends on rhetoric proofs, particularly ethos and logos. Use of ethos, or convincing an audience that someone – in this case, Barnaby Joyce – is a credible, relatable, intelligent and virtuous man with good character and good will. The showcasing of this technique is evident when Devine states Joyce “single-handedly killed off Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme in 2009”, a man who “[defies] the popular consensus”, yet still
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These two persuasive techniques are effective in persuading the audience that Barnaby Joyce is not only a good man who builds rapport with his voters and stands up for what he believes in, but also an intellectual politician who not only has the people in mind, but Australia’s future in general by showing statistics of how politically influential Joyce is