Lauren Burrows

RC 2001- Fall 2015

Rhetorical Analysis: 4th Draft
8 December 2015
Salt Triggering Pain in Plants: A Rhetorical Analysis

How different species have related to humankind has for a long time been of great
interest to not only scientists, but the public as a whole. People are interested in what similarities
can bring two very different things together and what differences can create barriers between
them, and from new research that talks about how plants can feel human-like pain, humans are
one step closer to finding a link to another species they are not related to. In this analysis, I will
be analyzing two different pieces of writing sharing the same information on research conducted
at the University of Wisconsin. I will be looking at what rhetorical tools were used to appeal to
and share essentially the same information with two different discourse communities.
In the research of Won-Gyu Choi from the University of Wisconsin that was published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we are taught about plants and how they
respond to stress in a similar way to humans. In Chois scholarly research, he tells us about the
more technical ways to view this response to stress: the mechanics involved in the operations of
the plant. Chois article directly states research conducted on 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 well-being. However, less
emphasis is placed on what this means for humans and more is placed on showcasing the
research that was conducted in the experiments.

The Conversation summarizes this research in a reader-friendly article on their webpage.

The Conversation US launched as a pilot project in October 2014. It is an independent source of
news and views from the academic and research community, delivered direct to the public.
Our team of professional editors work with university and research institute experts to unlock
their knowledge for use by the wider public, according to their website (Campbell). This
website works to make research more accessible to people not in the science community, and
resultingly, the article by The Conversation appealed more to how this research relates to
humans, and humans relations with plants and other species. It used many more rhetorical cues
which will be analyzed later in this paper, and a much different vocabulary for the differing
[from Chois] audience who was to be reached by their site.
The exigence in the writing 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.
The exigence that is occurring in the 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 play on emotion and most likely to get more views on its page. It takes the information
regarding chemical stress to the plant and views it in a different light, 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 structure of Chois research is set up in an analytical format, double columns without
any titles to each separate section, and long sentences containing difficult terminology and
chemical acronyms that only botanists and biology majors would necessarily understand (Choi,
6500). 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. There are also graphs, charts and figures
present in the text which would be hard to decode if not explained by the author, which they are
not (Choi, 6498). The intended audience of Choi, therefore, was most likely a range of scientists
and biologists who could appropriately interpret the data given.
The piece by The Conversation is structured in paragraphs with decent, short,
understandable terminology and three or four sentences to each paragraph so readers wont get
flustered quickly (Campbell, 1). There are short, catchy titles to each section and humorous
intermissions give the piece a more laid-back tone, perfect for the high school or university-aged
student who was clicking through Facebook before finding the article. This makes the general
public and perhaps even the younger generations good recipients for this piece.
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 (Campbell, 3), how it feels pain (Campbell, 3) and how we should almost
pity it for the pain it has to feel from our salt-use. What it emulates is a documentary made by an
animals rights group for why someone shouldnt eat meat. It is pathos-heavy. The Conversation
wants the reader 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, probably primarily due to its intended
audience of other scientific professionals. It focuses on the findings he found through science

and what triggers a reaction; what stimuli is necessary and what responses take place; what
chemicals are used and 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 in Chois work 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 (Choi, 6500). 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 (Choi, 6499). By
just looking at these tables and diagrams, an ordinary reader 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 Conversation. 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 present, but the numbers and analytics associated with the research is missing
from 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) (Campbell, 2), and percentages of salt
levels that have risen over each year. (Campbell). Ethos is shown 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. Ethos could also possibly be shown if a reader was to find the About Us page on

the website, saying the writers at The Conversation work with university and research institute
experts (Campbell).
Pathos is the big winner here for The Conversation, with catchy titles infiltrating every
paragraph of the short piece, such as the title of the second paragraph: These roots werent made
for walking (Campbell, 1) and the caption of the stock photo depicting a crane carrying a huge
load of salt that says One scoop or two? (Campbell, 2). 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.
Although each of these writings 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 using different means of rhetoric. 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 the reader the individually, the information of
the research conducted is still being sent. It is all in what approach the reader decides to take and
what information the reader actually wants to gather (if one is able to interpret it), or if the reader
just wants to understand a conveyance of it.

Works Cited
Campbell, M. (n.d.). Plants respond to salt just like humans respond to pain. Retrieved
September 16, 2015, from http://theconversation.com/plants-respond-to-salt-just-likehumans-respond-to-pain-2636
Choi, W., Toyota, M., Kim, S., Hilleary, R., & Gilroy, S. (2014). Salt stress-induced Ca2 waves
are associated with rapid, long-distance root-to-shoot signaling in plants. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 6497-6502.