Rhetorical Analysis: “The Death of Sandra Bland: What We Know So Far”
It is a pretty thought to believe that the United States Constitution was wholly truthful when stating all are created equal in this great and expansive nation, yet an overwhelming rise in racial prejudice has led citizens to think otherwise. In the NBC News article titled “The Death of Sandra Bland: What We Know So Far,” reporter John Schuppe effectively uses diction, punctuation, continuous reference, and different learning modalities to hint that the death may have more depth than the police department is letting on to.
The use of words that question the source, utilized by Schuppe, leads the reader to unconsciously wonder whether or not this suicide actually was one. He uses “apparent” twice throughout article: once when speaking of her “suicide” and another when referencing the potentially tampered video of the arrest: “The Texas Department of Public Safety blamed the apparent irregularities on a technical glitch.” By using these suspicious adverbs the author `brings to question the trustworthiness of the source. He does not state their testimonies as facts, but as potential truths. He later states, “Jail intake forms allegedly show that Bland told jailers she had tried to kill herself last year,” the use of the word “allegedly” here raises the question: did the police department put words in her perished mouth?…show more content… “They say” puts trust in the Department claims, these are never stated as facts. The definition of a fact is: something that is indisputably the case; therefore Schuppe, by continuously referencing “they” when stating details on the Sandra Bland case, is insinuating that these so-called specifics may be under