Ba Plastic Bags

550 Words3 Pages
The editorial, 'Ban the bags before it's too late' published in The Daily Chronicle on the 27th of May 2009 contends in a predominately, measured tone that the federal government needs to step up its actions and ban plastic bags in order to stop them from causing harm to our native animals and visciously damaging the environment. The editorial is targeted towards the general public, particularly those who have an interest in the environment and battling pollution. The editorial commences with the generalization that we must 'ban the bags before it's too late,' - a title that provides arguable evidence. Consequently, readers may agree with the unsubstantiated arguement that it will be too late for the environment if we do not act on the isse right now and that the damage will be done. Furthermore, the use of the emotive dysphemisms 'destroy' and 'die' - words which connote an extreme sense of annihilation - emphasize the potentially calamitamous outcomes which the sea life will succumb to if the bags aren't removed. This serves to compound the nuances of the generalization the readers have been pre-position with and thus, pulls at the heart strings of readers and forces them to think about the damage the bags are doing to the environment. By providing irrefutable evidence in the form of statistics, such as that at least '100,000 birds die each year to plastic bags' and that plastic bags last from '20 to a 100 years' the author succeeds in informing the audience of the monstrous damage the plastic bags are causing. Subsequentley, by including the reader with the words, 'we,' 'us' and 'our' the author is able to link the situation to the everday lives of readers who use plastic bags. In combination with the repetitively used statistical evdience, this adds to the notion that the readers may feel concerned and responsible about banning the plastic bags. In an
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