Rhetorical Elements In Adrienne Lafrance's Argument

In her article,”Hearing the Lost Sounds of Antiquity”, journalist Adrienne LaFrance effectively uses all of the rhetorical elements in order to appeal to her audience in a specific way. LaFrance applies these elements to thoroughly explain the importance of a complicated discovery about recreating lost sounds.

Even though this is an informative article, part of Adrienne LaFrance’s purpose is to intrigue readers and convince them that they are reading something worthwhile. LaFrance effectively reaches her intended purpose, mainly by keeping a balance between information and emotion, logos and pathos. LaFrance begins her article with the one sentence paragraph, “History is mostly silent to us now,” in order to draw readers in right away. This sentence and the next few paragraphs continue to appeal to the audience’s pathos in order to make sure readers don’t get bored before they get into the heart of the article.

Throughout the article, the paragraphs and sentences become longer as LaFrance begins to focus on the the reader’s sense of logic by providing more facts. When describing sound testing in an archaic church, LaFrance writes, “The tone ranged from about 50 hertz, which sounds like a low buzz, to 20 kilohertz, a high pitched whine.” Here, the

“[W]hen you have walls very close to one another the frequencies go back and forth… [At the time of discovery,] they described it as the sound of angels’ wings,” said James Donahue, one of the experts involved in the project. After Donahue heard this phenomenon for himself, he commented, “I heard the standard sweep tone until it hit 6 kilohertz… I could hear the fluttering. I said, ‘Wow, those are the angels.’” Showing Donahue’s emotion towards this sound strongly appeals to pathos and allows the audience to relate to what the angel wings represent, such as hope, enlightenment or