1. Considering Audience and Persuasive Strategies
Persuasive letter
Considering Audience and Persuasive Strategies

2. Consider your audience…
Not just the reader of the letter (me), but the person or group of people you are trying to persuade.
Affects Content:
Is your argument relevant to this audience?
Can your audience do anything about your argument?
For example, don’t argue against the grading policy to your teacher.

3. Consider your audience…
Affects Style/ Tone:
How will you address your audience?
Will you use the pronoun “you”?
Is it formal enough to use “sir” or “ma’am”?
What tone will you use?
Slightly humorous, formal and serious, conversational, intense, passionate?
How will audience affect sentence structure/ word choice?
Are there words that you need to define?
How complex must your writing style be to impress your audience?

4. Practice
Pull from the bin to receive your purpose, audience, and appeal. Write at least one persuasive paragraph using y our assigned appeal and considering your audience.

5. Persuasive Strategies - Basic
Association – Link with something desirable – cigarette ad with people dancing/ having fun.
Bandwagon – “Everyone is doing it” idea – “Everyone is tired of the government interfering…”
Experts – Using professionals’ or “plain folk” testimony. “99.9% of dentists agree”

6. Persuasive Strategies - Intermediate
Extrapolation – Drawing a big conclusion based on a few small facts – “We got a snow storm this year, so global warming is a hoax.”
Flattery – Speaking directly to your audience and complimenting them – “You are too smart to be fooled by advertisements.”
Glittering Generalities – Using words that carry a great deal of meaning/ emotion that automatically get the audience on your side without consideration of evidence – “freedom” “peace” “democracy”

7. Persuasive Strategies - Advanced
Ad Hominem – Attack the opponent, not the argument – “He had an affair, so his ideas on global warming are null and void”
Analogy – Comparing one situation to another – “Global warming is much like the Red Scare. It’s just based on fear.”
Diversion – “Red Herring” – meant to distract the audience from the bigger issue. “Yes global warming is a problem, but have you seen the crime on our streets?”

8. Persuasive Strategies Practice
Return to the articles from Thursday, and search for persuasive strategies.
For each article, answer the following additional questions.
What persuasive strategies were used?
Were they used effectively?