Shannon Green
Blog 2
The
specific artifact that I selected is an article titled “Two Last Obama- Era
Rules Worth Saving from the G.O.P. This article in particular talks about how
President Trump has signed 13 repeal measures passed by congress. It also talks
about the two important protections where the Senate must decide to follow the
lead of the House to vote and repeal them. One of the important protections
that remain threatened, according to this article, is the allowance of states
to establish payroll- deduction retirement accounts for private- sector workers
who do not have retirement coverage at work. The second is forcing energy
companies to limit harmful emissions of methane, the main component of natural
gas. According to The Times News, the
retirement regulation is consistent with Republicans traditions. This would
mean that repealing the retirement rule would violate both the interest of the
people and Republicans’ own “professed ideology.” The vote will come as soon as
Wednesday, putting the Vice President, Mike Pence, in a possible tiebreaking
decision – “a dubious victory,” The Times
News expresses. The second rule, the rule to limit methane, is opposed by
oil and gas interest and by some in Congress who have received offerings from
those interests. The article explains how industries benefit from this, since
methane can be sold. Making the decision to preserve these rules would allow
Senate Republicans to show some concern for needs of people.
The way
this article is written and by the way I summarized it above, left – sided.
Just by the title of the article, you can assume this is going to be a one
sided view and that view would go with left – sided liberals. It is also easy
to assume that because the article is from The Times News, a more liberal based
writing style. Because this calls for a specific type of rhetoric, I will be
using generic criticism as my method to explain this particular artifact.
According to Foss, generic criticism is “rooted in the assumption that certain types
of situations provoke similar needs and expectations in audiences and thus call
for particular kinds of rhetoric.” If this article and company are known for
having more left- sided views, they are going to use a specific rhetoric in their
title of the article and throughout the article. The title is what catches the
intended audience’s attention. If someone who has more right- sided view on
politics, they’re not going to stop and waste time even looking at a Times News
article. Even if the articles heading does not use left- sided rhetoric, if it
is from the Times News or CNN, it is more likely than not that a person with
right- sided views is not going to pick that article up. Generic criticism explains
this. This method states that it seeks to discover commonalities in rhetorical
patterns across occurring situations. This can relate to politics because in
any situation in politics, specific rhetoric is used towards political parties.
It is extremely consistent.
