Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt Jean Kilbourne Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetoric is used in all types of writing. It persuades an audience to accept or consider an idea. Two of the rhetorical appeals that are used in Kilbourne article are Logos and Ethos. The appeals to logos is the rhetors reasoning. In other words, logos is the way an author convinces his/her audience that an argument makes sense or seems logical by creating the technique of an argument. The appeals to ethos is similar to logos, but relies more on trustworthiness and credibility rather than making sense immediately. In Jean Kilbourne’s article Two Ways a woman can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence, overviews our society and the roles male and female are expected to fulfill. She exposes advertisement’s that promote the unfairness and wrongful

In fact, throughout her paper she stays positive and places profanity in quotation marks to let her audience know the words some females and males are being called in our society. For example, she states that “ridicules men who are not in control of their women” are ‘pussy-whipped.”’ (Kilbourne, 162) Therefore, if she leaves out the profanity some people are being called due to their gender it’ll be difficult for others to understand or position themselves in the majority who are being insulted. The way she uses language also allows her to build credibility and reasoning because it proves her point as if to why some men are disrespectful towards women. Kilbourne is also careful about how she words certain statements. She says “indeed the very worst kind of man for a woman to be in an intimate relationship with often a truly dangerous man, is the one considered most sexy and desirable in the popular culture”. (Kilbourne, 162) Thus, she’s not being bias instead she’s only speaking about the worst kind of man. By choosing her words carefully, it proves that she’s using great language and knows to not put the responsibility on all men, but on only certain men who are disrespectful and cruel towards women. Also, she clarifies that “Ads don’t directly cause violence, of course. But the violent images contribute to the state of terror.” (Kilbourne, 164) To emphasis, she’s drawing correlation instead of causation. In other words, the way a human is presented in the ad and the label one carries in an ad is what influences or justifies violence. Because Kilbourne is careful about her words, she’s considered credible. Especially, the fact that she doesn’t’ accuse all men of being dangerous, or the fact that she doesn’t blame an Ad for the causation of violence. Kilbourne also has strong appeals to logos. Simply, because her word choice, and her obvious