Natural Disasters Essays - Linguistics, Meteorology,

Natural Disasters Devastating is only one word that you can use to describe what a natural disaster is like. In "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger and "Super Disasters of the 21st Century," by Jacqueline Adams and Ken Kostel, the authors use many different strategies to describe the causes and effects of natural disasters. Three of the main techniques are as followed; text structure, choice of vocabulary, and data/details. Text structure is one way that authors show a cause and effect relationship. This is used in "Super Disasters of the 21st Century" and "The Perfect Storm." In "Super Disasters of the 21st Century," there is a subheading that says Hurricane Katrina followed by the sentence, "Hurricane Katrina was one of the most costliest hurricanes in U.S. history." That shows that the text is structured in a subheading format to show the transition from one topic to another. In "The Perfect Storm" Junger uses text structure when he says, "You see so much bad weather that you kinda get used to it. But then you see really bad weather and that, you never get used to." Sebastian Junger uses lines from Captain Johnston, and then he transitions to what he thinks and interpreted from the storm. Those were two examples of how authors use text structure when describing cause and effect. The authors of "Super Disasters of the 21st Century," and "The Perfect Storm," have a very good choice of vocabulary, which is another technique of cause and effect relationships. In "Super Disasters of the 21st Century," it says, "the most catastrophic event so far in this century occurred in 2004." The use of the word catastrophic shows emphasis on how bad it is. In "The Perfect Storm" it says, "They heaved a half ton boulder in the air 90 feet high." That shows how strong the waves were and it's dramatic effect. Vocabulary plays an important part in cause and effect relationships. For example, (going back to "Super Disasters of the 21st Century") when the author uses the word catastrophic it grabs the reader's attention and makes him/her interested. If the author had used the word awful, it probably wouldn't have grabbed the reader's attention as much. Lastly, data is another technique that can be used for cause and effect relationships. In both the articles that are written by Sebastian Junger, Jacqueline Adams, and Ken Kostel there is a lot of data being used. In "Super Disasters of the 21st Century" it says, "a piece of the Eurasian plate about 600 miles long and 60 miles wide pushed up as much as 30 feet." That shows how the tsunami had an impact on Indonesia and all of the bordering cities. In "The Perfect Storm" it says, "wave heights off of England have risen an average of 25% over the past couple decades, which converts to 20 foot increase in the highest waves." That shows the intensity of the storm, and makes it engaging to the reader. In conclusion, the article "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger, and "Super Disasters of the 21st Century" by Jacqueline Adams and Ken Kostel, the authors use many different strategies to describe a cause and effect relationship. Some of those strategies are text structure, vocabulary, and data. Text structure is important because it gives you an idea of what's going on. Vocabulary is important because it grabs the reader's attention. Finally, data is important because it interests the reader. Those were some techniques used in cause and effect relationships.