Style & Tone
Closely linked to audience is the concept of style and tone. You will recall that we said we adopt different ways of talking, or writing, depending on the audience we find ourselves addressing. A major part of this adaptation involves our perception of style and tone.
For example, when we discussed dealing with different levels of "formality" in offering a proposal, we said that we are likely to make radical changes in our approaches: casual in dealing with coworkers, formal in dealing with corporate "agents." Obviously, we have a fairly well-considered spectrum of behaviors in mind. How do we make decisions about using these behaviors in our communication efforts?
In an earlier lecture, I invited you to think about audience: who you thought was being addressed and what techniques the author used for various audiences. This week's discussion focuses more on writing style and formality of tone. You might want to consider such aspects of style and tone as:
- technical terms, jargon, and abbreviations (or acronyms) imply a command of a specific professional vocabulary (limited audience);
- defined terminology (of all kinds) and relatively common words imply a more general audience;
- an identifiable, and expected, structure (as in a proposal or scientific protocol) implies a specialized audience);
- a general discussion of a topic implies a general audience;
- a text that addresses the reader directly ("As you can see...") versus one that seems to lack an authoring agent ("The results indicate that...") provides some evidence of the authoring agents attitude and sense of responsibility;
- a text that fails to directly address issues, or lacks support (for sources) also provides some clues about authorial intention;
- the presence, or lack, of visual elements also help determine expected audience and purpose.
In thinking about style and tone you should remember that the decisions you make about these two communication elements determine, indeed control, the membership of your potential audience.
If you are producing a document for a professional community that has command of a specific vocabulary and, perhaps, symbology (scientific or mathematical symbols, for instance), then you should feel free to employ these techniques. On the other hand, a text, on even a similar topic, destined for a general audience would eschew (how's that for an odd word?) these same techniques.
Rhetoric and Audience Appeals
We’ll be reading about and discussing persuasion from a rhetorical perspective a bit later in the course, but we should begin considering the types of “appeals” that we use to not only engage readers but often to convince them to accept our information and perspectives.
Some perspectives on rhetorical persuasion have been synthesized from Aristotle, who wrote in On Rhetoric that rhetoric is finding all available means of persuasion.
Basically, the idea is that in communication contexts, we consider how to shape information so that it’s acceptable to our audiences. Three areas on which we can focus include logos, ethos, and pathos.
Logos, or the logic of our communication, includes not only facts and data, but also the ways that our communication is constructed, or it’s internal consistency (the “flow,” as some people have called it in discussion). Ethos, which refers to the ways we construct in communication our own credibility and that of the organizations we represent, includes among other things reputation and presentation as well as the professionalism we demonstrate in communication. Finally, pathos refers to the ways we connect with the beliefs, values, and needs of the audience.
Some people also mentioned in discussion the importance of revising and editing or the importance of making a good impression in written communication. The quality of a text certainly affects our ethos, but also the pathos and logos of our communication. When our writing is poorly constructed, people have difficulty understanding the information or valuing it.
All of these types of appeals are important factors in developing effective communications. And all of these factors are inter-related in communication.
Additional Resources
NASA: Addressing Different Audiences
Writers' Workshop (You can find other resources for writing at this website)