Shock to the System

785 Words4 Pages
‘Shock to the System’ Through the manipulation of conventions, authors can persuade and notify the readers of a feature article to agree with their point of view as evidently can be seen in ‘ Shock to the System’ by Mark White. Mark White encourages the reader to respond with outrage, anger and ‘shock’ towards the idea of the inappropriate overuse of Tasers in Australia. The author also raises ideas to do with the discrimination of sub- groups and the police perception by the community. White achieves this through the use of Rhetorical questions, statistics, anecdotes and expert opinions. At the start of ‘ Shock to the System,’ the reader is confronted with the idea of the inappropriate overuse of Tasers immediately. White in a clever manner starts this article of with the use of an emotive anecdote. White uses an anecdote that re-tells the reader about the last night of Beto’s life, a young Brazilian tourist who dies as a result of multiple Taser shots. “Roberto Laudisio spent his last days on Earth doing what he loved, which is playing soccer.” This example helps to show how White is portraying Beto as someone who enjoyed life and creates an image of him being a fun- loving, sporty type of guy, not a criminal who needed to be taken down with multiple Taser shots. The author uses anecdotal evidence to help in creating a sympathetic backstory to Beto, portraying him as a well mannered, lively young man, which then encourages the reader to view him with sympathy and feel sad and angered that he died in the way he did, in a way that no one should die. From the start of the article White manages to get the reader to accept his ideas and his point of view, thus then leading to the setting out of the rest of the article. Following the use of anecdotes, White then uses Rhetorical questions to bring across emotion and to question the readers leading them to
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