Rhetorical devices

Tom Law uses several rhetorical devices in his article "Cachau Bant: Mind Your Language" to engage his audience and make his article more attractive, in an attempt to trigger a response from his readers.

First, Law employs direct address through the use of the personal pronoun “you”: “You probably don't care much about this if you're an English speaker ‒ it doesn't affect you” (ll. 95-97);

As a German speaker you're sick of hearing these people drone on about their language. You're sick of them chuntering on about Dickens and Keats and Dad's Army and The Beatles and all the rest of the cultural twaddle that you don't understand. (ll. 63-69)

The use of the personal pronoun “you” or the adjective “your” is meant to suggest that the article is addressed to English speakers, who are invited to put themselves in the situation of losing their language or who are invited to imagine what English ha...