Heading a Soccer Ball and Concussions

This particular New York Times article immediately peaked my interest as soon as I read the title. After playing soccer for twelve years and club soccer for eight years, you could say I've headed a soccer ball quite a few times, and in some cases a few too many. I have never actually been diagnosed with a concussion, but my mother is one parent who was all over me "protecting my head and my brain cells". She wanted to have me wear a concussion head band, but I immediately denied it, and settled for the mouthguard instead. At that time, mouth guards were said to help lessen the impact on your brain moreso than the headband. This article was interesting in how if a player had headed the ball over 1,100 times in a year, they showed a loss of white matter in their brain. But, in the researchers' opinions, any amount below that number considers heading to be safe. That news will be well received by my mom because she worries my sometimes excessive heading is going to be the end of my intelligence.
 

The author of "A New Worry for Soccer Parents: Heading the Ball", Gretchen Reynolds, uses multiple rhetorical techniques of logos, ethos, and scientific diction that will appeal to her audience of soccer parents and players. Reynolds establishes ethos with her audience and her creditability with multiple scientific research reports. Her purpose is more of reporting and informing. The logos appeal to her audience is the evidence and results presented in these scientific research studies, including Dr. Michael L. Lipton from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and Elizabeth Larson from Humboldt State University. The scientific diction Reynolds uses includes "diffusion tensor imaging", "white matter", "axons", "neurons", "frontal lobe", and "temporo-occipital region". She not only just uses this jargon, but explains each term so that the common reader will understand what she is talking about. This allows any audience, from doctor to worried soccer parent to understand Gretchen Reynolds's New York Times article.


Source: Reynolds, Gretchen . "A New Worry for Soccer Parents: Heading the Ball." The New York Times 7 Dec. 2011, sec. Health: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.