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ĳ!Attach This Header To Top of All Paper Submissions!       [TIA]
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sSubject/Class Paper was submitted for  [English                ]
SSubject/Topic of paper (Please Be As Descriptive As Possible)   
a[The first in a series of practice AP English papers we did.   ]3 Letter
YFrom the part 3 of the paper. Year of paper is unknown. The   Abbrev.
 [The essay was regarding The Cat Bill.                         ]for
S       Grade Level (For High School Students):      9 [ ] 11 [ ]Major
u                                                   10 [ ] 12 [X]Education
B                                       (for Ont., Canada) 13 [ ]Areas,
m       Year (For University/College Students)       1 [ ]  3 [ ]MARK one:
I                                                    2 [ ]  4 [ ]
s                                                           5 [ ]English
SSchool/University/College/Institution [St. Joseph's Collegiate ][ENG] [X]
iCity & State (Province) of Inst.      [Buffalo, NY             ]History
OName of Teacher/Prof. submitted to    [Mr. Zabawa              ][HST] [ ]
nGrade Received (If Received Yet)                           [87%]Science
 Date Paper was submitted (mm/dd/yy)   [09/18/92                ][SCI] [ ]
FName of Author (Real or Alias)        [The Saint               ]Health &
oHigh School Avg./College GPA of Author                 [95.6   ]Sports
RIf used, Textbook/Novel/Classic Translator/Editor and Version/  [HTH] [ ]
m Edition Info [                                                ] -
 Additional Comments [                                          ]The
 [                                                              ]Information
 Allies
   
Paper 1: The Cat Bill                      Due date: 09/18/92

     In his statement of veto against the "Cat Bill",
Governor Stevenson used a number of strategies and linguistic
devices to make his argument against the bill more effective.
The organization, tone, diction and detail of the argument
all contributed to this purpose.

     The governor organized his argument into brief sections
of literary offensives and defensives. To begin with, he
briefly pointed out the problems and serious changes, such as
police involvement in the matter, which would have to take
place in order to enforce the new law. Next he belittled the
actual value of the bill as a serious proposal by pointing
out that after years of circulation as an object of
amusement, he was finally given the job of dealing seriously
with the bill.  Following this he identifies the 'criminal'
accusations against the cat as being absurd and defends the
cat by citing the service that cats provide by hunting
rodents. It is also notable that the 'victims', the birds,
were left completely out of the first few paragraphs while
the governor proceeded to destroy the opposing side by
indirectly accusing them of deliberating upon the absurd,
attempting to enforce the impossible, and of trying to
persecute a generally friendly animal. In the paragraph
before the concluding statement, the governor uses sarcasm
and irony to again belittle the importance of the matter and
to point out that dealing with this proposal wasted the time
of the legislative body. He concludes the argument by
reiterating his position on the matter and confirming his
veto and thus marks a definite ending point to his argument.

     The tone and diction, throughout the argument, went hand
in hand in attempting to produce a desired effect in the
mind of the audience. At the beginning of the letter, the
governor explained the bill as he interpreted it by stating
that the bill would "impose fines on owners or keepers who
permitted their cats to run at large off their premises." The
key phrase here is "at large". Criminals are most often
described as "at large" and the governor used the same phrase
to describe the roaming cat, an inference that the proponents
of the bill wished to classify the cat as a criminal. Through
this inference the governor also wanted to gain sympathy for










the cat by identifying it as a wrongly accused, innocent
creature. Instead of this phrase, if the phrase "to run wild"
had been used it would have had a negative effect on the
governor's argument by inferring that the cat created a
condition of anarchy.  Although both phrases essentially mean
the same thing the second one would have been grossly
inefficient in bringing about the desired effect. It is also
interesting to note that the term "cats at large" was used
again in the next sentence where the governor predicts that
the police will be called upon to "pick up and imprison" the
cats. The choice of words draws a vivid picture of law
enforcement officials pursuing a criminal and then
imprisoning him. When a cat is fit into this equation as the
criminal, it becomes a ridiculous scenario, and the effect
desired by the governor is attained.

     Later in the argument the governor uses sarcasm as his
persuasive weapon when he addresses the actual 'crimes' the
cat is being accused of and the importance of government
intervention in the matter.  For example, in the first
sentence of the fourth paragraph, the governor states that he
"does not agree that it should be the declared public policy
of Illinois that a cat visiting a neighbor's yard or crossing
the highway is a public nuisance". In this sentence the
governor uses the words "declared public policy" instead of
the word "law." Through these words he identifies the piece
of legislature as a very important and official document,
which by being a "public policy" will reflect the disposition
of the majority of citizens in the state and infers that
because of these qualities it should not be a site where laws
concerning a cat's trivial activities are deliberated upon.

     In the same paragraph, the governor attempts again to
gain sympathy for the cat by describing how many cats have to
live in "restricted premises", a phrase that implies that
since they are usually confined in a limited area they should
be entitled to "brief forays" without being persecuted.  The
persecution of the cats is described as a "game hunt" by the
governor to give it a vile overtone and to show the extreme
ideas that the bill represents. Later in the paragraph, he
goes onto say that a cat provides society a service by
killing rodents, and does this "without regard for property
lines", an irony because crossing property lines is
apparently one of the accusations being made against the cat.
Through this irony the governor attempted to show the
audience that it is absurd to call the cat's roaming about a








crime because he is roaming in the process of providing a
service.

     At the beginning of the fifth paragraph, the governor
admits that "cats destroy some birds" and then within the
same sentence attacks the proponents of the bill
sarcastically by saying that they are trying to further a
"worthy cause" with much "unselfish effort."  Firstly, by
saying that cats destroy "some" birds the governor softens
the impact of admitting that cats do commit violence. If the
word "some" had been left out there would be a distinctly
different impact on the audience because the audience would
clearly have seen what the governor had just stated. By using
the word "some" the number of birds presented as destroyed is
lowered significantly and a beneficial element of vagueness
is also sustained. The fact that cats actually hunt birds for
food whenever they can is completely hidden by the blanket of
vagueness that the word "some" provides. Next by saying that
this matter is considered a "worthy cause" by the proponents
of the bill he significantly lowers their credibility as able
legislators. When he goes on to say that they put much
"unselfish effort" into this cause the audience is
immediately led to believe that the legislative body has been
wasting there time on debating an absurd bill. He confirms
this belief for them by pointing out that the legislative
bodies "already have enough to do without trying to control
feline delinquency." It is notable that he uses the term
"feline delinquency." This term is used instead of something
such as "the activities of cats" because the tone in which
the words are stated implies a meaning such as the 'abnormal
behavior of an intelligent creature' which he uses to
exaggerate into a social issue what the bill's proponents
consider only a serious matter. If an intelligent creature is
behaving abnormally it will be considered a social issue, and
the governor thus expresses sarcastically that the proponents
of the bill have made a great affair out of something
trivial.

     In the concluding paragraph the governor remarks that he
is not vetoing the bill because he favors cats over birds but
rather because of the preceding reasons and concludes his
argument with a brief statement clearly defining his position
on the matter and confirming his veto against the bill. These
concluding statements are effective as a lasting impact upon
the audience and help to clear up any doubts that the
audience may have had.
