Creating rapport
Tone
• Whether in writing or in a speech, we must try
to get the audience on our side if we want to
persuade them of something.
• This can be done by:
– appealing to the audience's reason
– appealing to audience's experiences
– appealing to the audience's emotions.
Appealing to the audience's reason
• What is it about
the language
used by the
Foundation for
Biomedical
Research that
makes them seem
reasonable?
• How does the
image make the
organisation's
opponents seem?
Them and us
• An effective means of building rapport with an
audience is to suggest that only you and they
have a reasonable argument, and/or others
are unreasonable.
• Read the following extract by John Cameron
on the 2011 riots in England from The Scottish
Review. Discuss how language is used to
create this dual effect.
'There is a pernicious spirit of entitlement and instant
gratification, transcending race and class, infecting the current
generation of urban youth in Britain. And this is driven on by an
army of politically-correct apologists, pandering to their shallow
juvenile whims and offering an orgy of excuses on their behalf.
We are expected to believe that these rampaging hooligans are
motivated by their rage at inequality, deprivation, unemployment,
police brutality and 'Tory cuts'. It is nothing of the sort. In recent
years there have been disgraceful scenes in the capital where the
perpetrators have largely been white, privileged middle-class
students.
What we witness in every 'protest' is not a political act or a cry
for social justice but a despicable mixture of mindless criminality
and opportunistic looting. With such things as Twitter, any
demonstration can be hijacked by anarchistic thugs and perhaps it
is time we saw these 'social' networking sites for what they
are: 'anti-social'.'
Your writing
• Using a 'them and us' tone, try one of the
following brief exercises:
– Persuade an audience that smoking should be
banned.
– Persuade an audience that corporal punishment
should be brought back to schools.
– Persuade an audience that people should have to
buy licences to keep a dog.
Appealing to an audience's experiences
• Creating the feeling in an audience that they
share values with you can be reinforced by
suggesting that you have had experiences very
similar to theirs.
• What are some of the interests you have that
bind you to other people? Think about friends,
family, classmates.
Use anecdotes
We can create rapport through
the use of anecdotes that the
reader or listener can relate to:
we may describe an experience
they have had or express a fear
they share.
In doing this, we can often
employ the creative techniques
found in personal writing, such as
the use of imagery.
How does this advert from PETA
use anecdote to create a bond
with the reader?
‘I distinctly remember the stress caused by the August
shopping trip for school uniforms. My mother had to
corral us because we'd been running wild for weeks,
and then herd us to the shops like sulky cattle.
She had to buy uniforms for four of us, and I
remember noting the lines on her face as she scrimped
and scraped to save the money she needed all in one
big lump sum; often, she couldn't quite make it, and
had to take 'tick' at exorbitant rates just to buy us the
regulation shoes. I know she had sleepless nights about
it, and sometimes tears: I wouldn't wish that stress on
anyone.’
Discuss this extract: what effect does it have
on the reader? How is that achieved?
Your writing
• Think about an anecdote from your
experience and use it to:
– persuade an audience that young people should
be respected more in society
– persuade an audience that the quality of fast food
should be improved
– persuade an audience that every child should
have access to school trips.
Appealing to the audience's emotion
• As well as appealing to a shared sense of
reason or shared experiences, we can also
suggest shared emotions.
• Look at the following advertisements from the
Canadian activist group Adbusters Media
Foundation.
• What feelings do each of the adverts appeal to?
• What language features do you recognise?
• How is this
advert meant to
make you feel?
• What emotions
are evoked?
• How does
language do this?
• How is this
advert meant to
make you feel?
• What emotions
are evoked?
• How does
language do this?
Emotive facts
• We tend to think of facts as being neutral,
unemotional. However, as we saw when we looked
at how statistics are used, we can manipulate facts to
create tone.
• Read the following piece of writing, a reaction to a
Amnesty International report for the UN about child
soldiers at
http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no3/153chil2.htm
• What facts are mentioned in the extract? How are
they presented emotionally? What feelings does the
writer wish to evoke?
How would you feel if your little sister or brother, or
perhaps your own child, was seen by others as being 'cheap'
and 'expendable'? That's what happens to an estimated
300,000 children around the world, some as young as seven,
who are taken by militias and brainwashed into being soldiers.
At an age when, in Glasgow, a child would be learning
their ABCs and playing games in the playground and being
looked after by adults who care for them, in many parts of the
world children are being taught how to use guns and knives
and machetes to kill people.
According to a report by Amnesty International, for every
childhood lost, an adult life is blighted too. Former child
soldiers suffer horrific post-traumatic stress disorders, and are
unable to form relationships or hold down a job. The cost to
the whole society is incalculable. How different would our
family life, our communities be, if such a situation happened
here?
Your writing
• Think about what feelings you might wish to
evoke in a reader about one of the following,
and try a short piece of writing in which you
attempt to:
– persuade an audience that Scotland should be an
independent country
– persuade an audience that murderers should be
executed
– persuade an audience that violent video games
should be banned.
Peer / self evaluation
• Identify up to three ways in which the
activities you have done in this lesson might
improve your own writing.
• Discuss these with a partner, and amend them
if you wish.