Lauren Burrows

RC 2001- Fall 2015

8 September 2015

Salt Triggering Pain in Plants: A Rhetorical Analysis

The relation of humans to other species has for a long time been of great interest to not
only scientists, but the public as a whole. Botany has recently made large bounds in research of
comparisons of species. In both the research of Won-Gyu Choi from the University of Wisconsin,
and said research that was summarized by an article from The Conversation, we are taught about
plants and how they respond to stress in a similar way to humans. Chois scholarly research, he
tells us about the more technical ways to view this response to stress; the mechanics involved in
the plant, the certain chemicals that make the response happen, the ways that signals fire, how
plants defend themselves against their opponent, and how the plant manages to create a synthetic
nervous system for itself by utilizing its different respondents to stimuli. The article written by
The Conversation, an online news journal, is basically recapping what is being shown in this
research by Choi. Malcom Campbell, from the University of Toronto, basically sums up what the
article says so that more simple audiences can understand what is being portrayed by the
technical terms associated with the first piece.
The article basically speaks about how salt triggers chemicals in plants that correlate with
stress, and how in response to that stress, the plant will exert calcium from the roots all the way
to the tips of each leaf in order to defend itself against the toxin that salt is to its livelihood. This

process appears similar to human pain processes, and what our bodies do when we are
experiencing sensation that is not good for our wellbeing.
The structure of Chois research is set up in a very analytical format, double columns
without any titles to each separate section, with long-winded sentences containing difficult
terminology and chemical acronyms that only botanists and biology majors would necessarily
understand. This makes the information quite intimidating to first-time readers of findings, and
may turn some off to figuring out what the text is about. The structure of the piece by The
Conversation reads like a short story, in paragraphs with decent, short, understandable
terminology and three or four sentences to each paragraph so readers wont get flustered quickly.
There really isnt any metaphorical language in the research by Choi, but in the article by
The Conversation, the author is constantly personifying the plant as a human. It talks about how
we should help it, how it feels pain and how we should almost pity it for the pain it has to
feel from our salt-use. What it reminds me of is a documentary made by an animals rights group
for why you shouldnt eat meat. It is pathos-heavy. It wants you to feel bad for the plant and
expresses its response to pain with calcium as a cry for help in its system.
The research by Choi is extremely logos-heavy. It focuses on the findings he found
through science and what triggers what in a reaction; what stimuli is necessary and what
responses take place; what chemicals are used, what happens when the plant puts up its defenses.
It is also ethos-heavy as the research comes from a university setting and was done with other
researchers who he cites at an extensive list at the end of his article. Ethos is also presented
through numerous graphs and diagrams that have pointers to locate every single different type of
measurement, temperature, oxidation level, etc. The diagrams are labeled with letters A, B, C
instead of with interesting titles to grab readers attention. There are also tables with genes and

which genes are released because of which stress, such as water stress distributes the POP2;3
gene shown in Table 1. By just looking at these tables and diagrams, you would not be able to
gather what was being displayed, and even with background knowledge, it would be difficult to
understand even using the text. Pathos is basically nonexistent in this research, unless brought on
by the reader themselves.
Quite the opposite is shown in the second piece. In the article by The Conversation that
covers the exact same topic, logos is shown in a very small dose. Basically, the understanding of
what is going on is there, but the numbers and analytics associated with the research is missing
form the evidence, and what is given is only a basic outline. The little logos that appears in the
text is that of time relevance (over the past 50 years), and percentages of salt levels that have
risen over each year. Ethos is also basically nowhere to be found, except for in the middle of the
article where it cites that the work was originally done by Choi and links to the second piece I
refer to which is his scientific research, along with the website for the university he conducted
the research at. Pathos is the big winner here, with catchy titles infiltrating every paragraph of the
short piece, such as the title of the second paragraph: These roots werent made for walking
and the caption of the stock photo depicting a crane carrying a huge load of salt that says One
scoop or two? The article talks about humans as the bad guys in the story, speaking of the
enormous amounts of salt we use when our roads are iced over, and how much we contribute to
plants and the negative sensation that occurs in their cells when they encounter that salt. It brings
stress to a linkage to actual physical pain that humans feel, and though a good strategy for
bringing about change, this isnt necessarily a one hundred percent fair approach when using
data, and could be swayed in different ways that makes it stray from the original information
found.

The exigence that is occurring in the first article by The Conversation is basically the
question of similarities and linkages between different types of organisms. Humans have always
been interested in how similar we are to monkeys, or which animals have thumbs like us, and
which ones cry when members of their herds die. The Conversation knows this, and used this
research to put a spin on our emotion and get more views on its page. It takes the information
regarding chemical stress to the plant and plays to us, making us subconsciously link stress to
emotional responses to pain that we feel, which is not the same though it seems so in the article.
The exigence in the second piece by Choi is how plants respond to stress. Basically,
every organism responds to stress in a different way, and thats what keeps different organisms
alive and thriving. If each different living thing didnt respond to stress, it wouldnt survive very
long because there would be no defense against common enemies that are attacking their body
systems.
Although each of these articles talks about salt and plants chemical reactions to exert
calcium to defend against salt intake and its harmful effects to its structure, they are presented in
extremely different ways. One way is the analytical, technical approach to inform the scientific
community of a new finding on how body systems communicate within themselves and protect
themselves from the outside world, while the other is the human-linking, emotional approach to a
purely natural and biological reaction in order to bring the attention of everyday humans who
may or may not feel kindly toward their plant partners. I suppose whichever way appeals to you
the most, the information is still (sort of) being sent. It is all in what approach you decide to take
and what information you actually want to gather or if you just want to understand a conveyance
of it.

Works Cited

Campbell, Malcom. "Plants Respond to Salt Just like Humans Respond to Pain." The
Conversation. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.
Choi, W.-G., M. Toyota, S.-H. Kim, R. Hilleary, and S. Gilroy. "Salt Stress-induced Ca2 Waves
Are Associated with Rapid, Long-distance Root-to-shoot Signaling in Plants." Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 111.17 (2014): 6497-502. PNAS. Web. 02 Sept. 2015.