Dog fighting is a controversial and emotional issue.
Dog fighting was thrust into the national spotlight when Michael Vick was charged and convicted of the crime in the early 2000s. Since that time, people on local and national stages have heatedly debated the issue. Weighing in on this debate is at worst an opportunity to practice your rhetorical acumen, at best a moral imperative. Writing a persuasive speech on dog fighting requires careful consideration of the issue and its import to society as a whole.
Instructions
1. Review primary and secondary source material about dogfighting from reputable sources, both print and online. Consider organizations such as the ASPCA and American Humane Society , as wells as books such as George Armitage's "Thirty Years with Fighting Dogs" and Mike Homan's "A Complete History of Fighting Dogs."
2. Identify your general position on the issue of dog fighting. General positions are unqualified and lack the nuance of a fully developed position. They can be limited to simple value statements such as "Dog fighting is bad" or "Dog fighting is good."
3. Develop your general position by adding qualifying statements and nuance. For example, while you may be opposed to dog fighting, you might also recognize it to be a cultural practice, making it illegal, but not entirely morally reprehensible. Or, you might believe that dog fighting is morally reprehensible and those people who fight dogs are either morally underdeveloped or depraved.
4. Transform your qualified position into a thesis statement, which will guide your speech and can be thought of as an answer to a main research question. Because it is a thesis statement for a persuasive speech, the statement will be answering an "is" or "should" value question, such as: "Is dog fighting evil?" or "Should the punishment for dog fighting have harsher punishment?" Your thesis statement will be the qualifying statement that follows your "yes" or "no" answer to questions such as these.
5. Articulate three powerful reasons why your thesis statement is true. Each respective reason should appeal to a different element of Aristotle's rhetorical triangle. Briefly, the rhetorical triangle is broken up into ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is an appeal to authority, pathos is an appeal to emotion and logos is an appeal to logic. For example, if your thesis is that punishment for dog fighting should be harsher, your three reasons could mention that ASPCA, HSUS and the U.S. Attorney General's office believe harsher penalties will be a strong deterrent (ethos), harsher punishment might save more innocent puppies (pathos), and harsher punishment provides powerful disincentive to all would-be criminals (logos).
6. Craft the body of your speech, dedicating one section to each of your rhetorical claims.
7. Develop an introduction to capture your audience's attention. Introductions should rely upon one of the rhetorical elements. Aristotle believed that ideas naturally suggested a rhetorical element best suited for their expression based upon their natural bearing. For many, dog fighting is an emotional issue because of the apparent innocence of the clearest victims, the dogs. Consequently, consider an introduction with a heavy emphasis on pathos (emotion), perhaps a description of the horrifying conditions under which fighting dogs exist.
8. Reiterate your thesis and each of your rhetorical claims in a conclusion. Considering the emotional nature of this topic, end your conclusion with an uplifting idea or thought, even if you limit that thought to the idea that things will get better in terms of dog fighting.
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