1. Persuasion and Rhetorical Strategies1

2. PERSUASION
Persuasion is used when the writer or speaker is trying to convince a reader or listener to think or act in a particular way. 2

3. PERSUASIVE APPEALS Author/Speaker Credibility (Ethos)
Creating an argument or persuading by using credibility through experience, or by establishing credibility through legitimate sources of information (such as experts in a particular field. 3

4. PERSUASIVE APPEALS Appeals to Reason/Logic (Logos)
Logical arguments based on verifiable evidence, such as facts, statistics, or expert testimony 4

5. PERSUASIVE APPEALS Appeals to Emotion (Pathos)
Statements intended to affect listeners’/readers’ feelings about the subject. These statements often include charged language-words with strong positive or negative associations.

6. Testing Persuasive Appeals
Is the author’s argument supported by evidence, or is it based on faulty assumptions? (Using reliable sources.)
Does the author link ideas clearly or make leaps in logic? (Transitions between ideas help—you should be able to connect your ideas in a way that makes sense.)
Is the argument consistent or contradictory? (Thesis will help with this.) 6

7. RHETORICAL DEVICES Speakers/writers use rhetorical devices to:
emphasize their ideas
help their listeners to remember the important points
arouse an emotional response in an audience 7

8. ANALOGIES (METAPHORS/SIMILES)
A speaker or writer compares two things, usually that are not like one another, to make a point. This helps to:
emphasize specific ideas
create either a positive or negative connotations for a word, event, situation, or idea
Example: The wounds of the politician’s policies would bleed the country dry. 8

9. ALLUSION
A speaker or writer references a historical figure, author, piece of literature, celebrity, or event. These can be biblical.
Sometimes used to create analogies.
To emphasize specific ideas and to establish credibility or evoke emotion.
Example: The new land looked majestic in the fading light; the sun setting on the new Eden as they travelled towards home—finally free from their oppressive government. 9

10. ALLITERATION
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Writers use alliteration to give emphasis to words, to imitate sounds, and to create musical effects.
“Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I wondered weak and weary,…”
“The Raven”-Edgar Allen Poe 10

11. RHETORICAL QUESTION
A Rhetorical Question is a question with an obvious answer.
A question that you don’t expect people to answer, but it is a question that makes people THINK! 11

12. REPETITION
Repetition is expressing different ideas using the same words or images in order to reinforce concepts and unify the speech. 12

13. RESTATEMENT (also called ANAPHORA in some cases)
Restatement is expressing the same idea in different words to clarify and stress key points. 13

14. What’s What?
“We will never give up; we will never surrender, we will never be defeated.”
“Never give up,”
“never surrender,” and “never be defeated.” is an example of…
restatement
“We will never…” is an example of…
repetition (anaphora, in this case—since it’s the beginning of a sentence) 14

15. What’s What? “I wanna talk about me, Wanna talk about I
“Wanna talk about” is an example of…
-repetition
“me”, “I” and “#1” is an example of…
-restatement…since all of the words are referring to the same object.

16. PARALLELISM
Parallelism is the repetition of a grammatical structure or an arrangement of words in order to create rhythm and make words more memorable. 16

17. Faulty Parallelism Example
They enjoy movies, walking under the moonlight, and songs from the 1930s jazz period.
Notice how it sounds and looks kind of clunky. The types of words are not in identical order in the list.

18. Better Parallelism
good parallelism: They enjoy short funny movies, long moonlit walks, and classic jazz music.
”They enjoy”
”short funny movies," [Adjective--Adjective--Object]
"long moonlit walks," [Adjective--Adjective--Object]
"and classic jazz music." [Adjective--Adjective--Object]

19. Even Better Parallelism
more good parallelism: They love watching funny movies, taking moonlit walks, and singing classic jazz.
“They love”
”watching funny movies" [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund]
"taking moonlit walks" [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund]
"and singing classic jazz." [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund]
Knowing your sentence structure is key to understanding parallelism. If you need more help with this, we can work together on finding and understanding more examples.