The Rhetorical Analysis of “The Chemistry of Wine Making” as an Example of Scientific Writing.

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The article “Chemistry of Winemaking: A unique Lecture Demonstration” by L. B. Church of the State University of New York, seeks to demonstrate how the winemaking process can be used as a teaching tool. Found in the Journal of Chemical Education, the text uses an instructive and formal tone while discussing the process and how it might relate to the classroom. His rhetoric leans heavily toward the use of logic. Aimed for chemistry teachers, the article refrains from using step-by-step demonstrations of each and every process, and instead discusses the use of common techniques that could be used within the framework of Winemaking. By guiding the readers through the general process, the author makes it seem a logical and easy to implement demonstration that would capture and maintain the interest of students. He does this with a noticeable lack of appeals toward pathos and ethos, and indeed, there are absolutely none of the tried and true tools of persuasion. I believe this is a deliberate act on Church’s part to accommodate his discourse community of chemists. The community has little interest in how someone may feel about any given subject, and instead desires the facts behind that subject so that they may draw their own conclusions. The discourse community is interested in what you started with, what you did with it, and what you observed during and after the process. Then, and only then, should the conclusions derived from that information be given. Even after having done so, a writer in the scientific community must be prepared to be proven wrong, as that is the nature of science. As such, attempts to persuade via emotion tend to be ineffective, and would often be better spent presenting your arguments, and so I feel that the ...

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...how useful the demonstration would be in a classroom. The author’s tone is formal and academic in nature, without heartfelt appeals or attempts to persuade by emotion.

In the span of only a few pages, L.B. Church has given us an overview of the winemaking process. He has done so with sufficient detail for those in the chemistry community to follow along, yet still in a cursory enough manner as to not bog them down with the unnecessary. Written as if it were the procedure of an experiment, he has given enough information for the experiment to be repeated, tested, validated and improved upon. And that is almost assuredly his goal from the very beginning, as it must be for any published author in the chemistry community.

Works Cited

Church, L. B. "The Chemistry of Winemaking. An Unique Lecture Demonstration." Journal of Chemical Education 49.3 (1972): 174. Print.

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