Exercise

Which rhetorical techniques (assuring, guarding, discounting) are being using in the following passages?

  1. Although drilling for oil in Alaska will disrupt some wildlife, it is better than having to depend on foreign oil, which has the tendency to draw us into foreign conflicts that we would otherwise not be involved in.
  2. Let there be no doubt: the entity that carried out this attack is a known terrorist organization, whose attacks have a characteristic style - a style that is seen in this attack today.
  3. Privatizing the water utilities in Detroit was an unprecedented move that has garnered a lot of criticism. Nonetheless, it is helping Detroit to recover from bankruptcy.
  4. Most pediatricians agree that the single most important factor in childhood obesity is eating sugary, processed foods, which have become all too common in our day and age.
  5. Although not every case of AIDS is caused by HIV, it is arguable that most are.
  6. Abraham Lincoln was probably our greatest president since he helped keep together a nation on the brink of splintering into two.
  7. No one with any sense would support Obamacare.
  8. Even if universal healthcare is expensive, it is still the just thing to do.
  9. While our country has made significant strides in overcoming explicit racist policies, the wide disparity of wealth, prestige and influence that characterize white and black Americans shows that we are still implicitly a racist country.
  10. Recent studies have show that there is no direct link between vaccines and autism.