Rhetorical Analysis Of John Hogan's Does Peace Have A Chance
640 Words3 Pages
The essay Does Peace have a Chance? by John Hogan is effective in arguing that war and wartime casualties are on the decline through the use of rhetorical strategies. The author reinforces his position with the use of statistics, as well as references to various authorities. As well as using comparisons of different factors within the paper. While the author does have strong arguments, he does have some problems with his paper that will be explored.
The author uses many different statistics from various sources to strengthen his argument. In the first couple of paragraphs the author shows that in comparison to other sources of death. Those that occur from war or war-related issues are actually quite small(Horgan, 237). The author also uses a historical comparison of statistics to show that in the early 20th century an average of of 3.8 million deaths occurred due to war and state-sponsored genocide (237). In contrast only 800,000 people died each year in the later half…show more content… He refers early on to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI for short, and their research into the wartime and war related deaths, which reinforces his argument that wartime deaths are on the decline(237). He also refers to academic authorities from many reputable institutions in the United States such as the University of Maryland, the University of Illinois as well as Harvard(237-239). The inclusion of these academic institutions help establish the author's ethos. As they give the notion that the author is using a primarily academic background for his research and his paper. Still not all his sources are academic and one is quite questionable. The author cites economist Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute for one of his statistics on deaths in a simple society(238). Which is an interesting choice for an anthropological source, but is only a minor part of the author's