Vera Songwe Use Rhetoric In The African Swamp Protecting Earth's Environment

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Rhetoric is an extremely large factor in literature, and using it can help develop a piece from satisfactory to extraordinary. Rhetoric is used in many different writing pieces. One example of a skilled writer that uses this technique is Vera Songwe. In her TED talk, “The African Swamp Protecting Earth’s Environment,” Vera Songwe uses her wide range of knowledge and experiences with the world's economic situations, information from credible sources, and anaphora to help provide her audience with a greater understanding of the importance of the African Swamps and the dangers they face today. First, Vera Songwe has a strong background in economics and she is able to use her extensive experiences to build her credibility, which, in turn, gives the audience more reasons to trust what she is saying is factual. When Songwe’s credibility is boosted, it helps convince the reader that the information being presented is also credible. This is a technique called ethos. An example from the reading is, “She has …show more content…

She gives numerical information about the environment's past, its present standings, and what can happen in the future, if not understood now. When looking at the text, the reader can notice an abundance of numerical data. This data is Songwe’s use of logos to help provide her audience with accurate information. Logos is logistical and statistical information. Examples of Songwe’s use of logos are, “A couple of years ago, scientists discovered that these tropical peatlands are probably the largest carbon sink in the world. They store 30 billion tons of carbon. If they did not exist, we would have probably already stepped beyond the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming” (1-2). The excerpt from the text shows two examples of logos. In total, the quote above uses numbers of present information and numbers to support a hypothetical situation, showing the importance of logos in Songwe’s