“They Took a Knee”


The speech “They took a knee” which was written by Megan Garber. The purpose of this text was to inform, explain, and justify to the audience about the kneeling at football games and how the kneeling is to protest the injustices the police and government officials have done to minorities. The target audience is Americans between teenagers and the elderly that preferably agrees with her position. The author supports the movement mentioned in the text.
            The author builds her credibility by quoting accurately and stating when and where the phrases were said. The rhetorical device, repetition, is used again and again throughout the article, especially the use of “…took a knee” at the beginning as an attempt to create a tense atmosphere for the reader, to make the following text more impactful. The author uses appeals to emotions and ethic by explaining that this movement is to protests injustices that have taken place against minorities so it makes you feel sad or angry about the injustices and that you, an American, have a civil responsibility to support the movement, making you agree with the author’s views.
 The author also uses allusion in where she alludes the movement to a game of football by describing football as a progressive game that moves yard by yard, referring to all the players that started kneeling game after game. She repeats the same allusion twice, in the middle and at the end, to simplify her explanation.
            I felt like the text was well constructed with an amazing allusion to football, which is where the movement is centralized in. The text persuaded me slightly, simply because some of her explanations had some gaps that needed to be filled with more details, but overall it was a decently persuasive point of view.


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