Lauren Burrows

RC 2001- Fall 2015

2 September 2015

Salt Triggering Pain in Plants: A Rhetorical Analysis

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 itimidating 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.
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. 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?
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. I suppose whichever way appeals to you the most, either the factheavy or the emotion-heavy approach, 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.