Persuasion

 I would expect you will find it amusing that I think persuasion, especially as it applies to proposals, is perhaps the most challenging and useful writing technique you can learn. On the one hand, it can be argued that most documents have a "persuasive" aspect to them. A VCR manual, for instance, does try to "convince" the user that the information and processes described in the text is the only, perhaps best, approach to using the device. Arguable, I know, but an interesting point nonetheless!

If you have followed any of the major televised "trials" of our time, you get the idea that persuasion is a major part of the process; persuading the jury that a client is innocent (or guilty). Similarly, it is difficult to escape the persuasive character of political oratory and everyday marketing. While one can argue the relative success of each of these persuasive events, it is hard to refute their presence or intent.

You probably also recognize that most people apply the term "rhetoric" to many of these persuasive events; in our culture, that attribution sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, has a pejorative spin to it: "Oh, that's just empty rhetoric!" But, the basis for successful persuasion is undoubtedly found in traditional rhetoric. Without belaboring or belittling the many ideas embedded in the study of traditional rhetoric, I will offer a broad, general overview of rhetoric to help you visualize how it can be usefully applied to your communication tasks.

Rhetorical communication is intentional, purposeful, and goal-oriented. Rhetoric presents situations that require choice and action. Rhetoric is both a method and a practice. It is a method because certain principles are observed in its usage, it is a practice because rhetoric is used to shape ideas and give them expression. As a method, rhetoric is an intellectual enterprise; as a practice, it is a social enterprise. Lastly, rhetoric is a conscious art that involves the planning and execution of messages.

One way to distinguish rhetoric from other classic forms of communication is to contrast it to their purposes. For example, narratives are stories we tell ourselves and other people. They express cultural norms; they tell us how the world ought to be. The story lines of a culture are not always true. Another classic form, dialectic, consists of questions and answers. While granting the importance of cultural norms, dialecticians posits that a story's truth should be established before the story is told. In modern times, dialectical thinking takes the form of critical thinking. Unlike either of these forms, rhetoric does not reveal ideas through stories, as with the narrative, or deal with abstractions, as with dialectic. Rhetoric helps us form specific appeals for a given situation. Thus, a rhetorical appeal ideally is never divorced from its audience or its place in time.

That placement, in terms of place and audience, can be called the rhetorical situation, which calls for a deliberate response. We expect and anticipate a response that is appropriate to the situation. A rhetorical situation is composed of an exigency, an audience, and constraints. Again, without delving too deeply into the topic, an exigency can best be thought of as a defect that demands attention. For example, you might be proposing a new traffic pattern because the existing one seems unsafe. For any persuasive communication, the audience consists of those people capable of mediating change. It would do you little good to solicit the response of a powerless audience. Finally, constraints describes the limits and opportunities inherent in the situation that shape the message delivered to an audience. Constraints can be physical or psychological; physically you might be too remote from the appropriate audience to deliver your message; psychologically, you might be too emotionally involved in the proposal to objectively deliver your message.

Theoretically, an analysis of a rhetorical situation will evoke an appropriate response to the exigency. Rhetorical communication aims to change attitudes, beliefs, and actions. To achieve this goal, it employs reasoned appeals based on factual evidence and opinion that lead to a specific and intended conclusion. Genuine argument has three preconditions:

• Respect for a reader's freedom of choice,
• Entertain the possibility of being wrong,
• Share an interest in the outcome.

Basically, all you need to remember is that topical systems have three divisions:

• General topics--provides a global view of the topic; traffic congestion creates a situation that engenders many accidents,
• Specific topics--makes that global view more specific; the road conditions at the intersection of Interstates 40 and 85 combines two high-speed, crowded roads without adequate controls,
• Review topics--are there similar situations, or solutions, one could point to?

An additional aspect of employing a topical system is that you also get a sense of how your topic influences potential audience. For example, in discussing all traffic problems, you are likely to be able to write a paper for a general audience. We all drive; we all experience pretty much the same problems. When you confine your topic to congestion, you may have to add more specificity. What does "congestion" mean? In what conditions? Why should the reader be concerned? When you take the next step and focus on one kind of congestion, you may find that you need to consider many more questions. What constitutes "high-speed"? Does this mean above legal speed? Are there any peripheral issues that contribute to the problem: entry ramps, trucks, lighting conditions, animal life, etc.? It may also be that the kind of specificity you have to add may call for specialized knowledge; perhaps one issue is the kind of paving or mandated ramp access angles, etc. As you can see, you can learn a lot about the kind of audience "required" to read your text, rather than the audience you believe you have in mind. A city council might be able to evaluate one kind of information; a state highway engineer another.

Once you have completed this topical reasoning exercise you can begin to consider how to structure your message. Traditional rhetoric relies on a variety of proofs; learning these are beyond the scope of this course, though I encourage you to review them if you intend to do any marketing or proposal writing during your professional careers. Our focus, instead, will be on structure as it informs the reader's understanding of our intended message. Basically, a text's structure provides patterns through which we perceive. This structure encourages, satisfies, and anticipates how the reader reaches an understanding of our intention. In this way, structures are strategies that shape attitudes, beliefs, and actions. They have much to do with how an audience responds.