"Slave trade is a commerce carried to the highest pitch of human depravity" : En retorikanalys av Carl Bernhard Wadström och brittiska abolitionisters argument mot slavhandeln.

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how the British abolition movement used the Swedish abolitionist Carl Bernhard Wadström's argument against the slave trade. We want to investigate which rhetoric Wadström himself used and which rhetoric abolitionists used when referring to Wadström's arguments. To investigate which rhetoric is used, we have taken support in Aristotle's theories of rhetoric and, above all, his ideas on the three modes of persuasion, ethos, pathos and logos. The source material that forms the basis of the study is Wadström's book Observations on the slave trade and five other types of texts written by abolitionists where Wadström and his arguments against the slave trade are mentioned. The main result we found is that Wadström in his book uses an emotional language to convince his readers of the evil of the slave trade. However, the abolitionists do not use an emotional language in their texts when using Wadström's arguments. Abolitionists used ethos and logos as modes of persuasions to convince that slave trade should be banned.