PERSUASIVE WRITING
AND SPEAKING
PERSUASIVE WRITING
 Goal: Writer aims to get the reader to agree with his per spective.
 Technique: Opinions are blended with facts.
 Point of view: Communicates directly to a per son or group, so it’s
common it use both fir st and second -person.
 Attitude: Writers “go af ter” their readers more aggressively. Per sonal,
passionate, emotional.
 Per spectives presented : Single-minded goal---get what the writer wants.
Per sonal conviction.
 Star ting point: Pick a topic, choose a side to “fight for”, star t writing.
 Suppor t: rely mostly on feelings and the writer’s passion. The writer plays
on the audience’s emotions to get what he wants. The audience will agree
with the writer because of his ef fective use of rhetorical devices and
emotional appeals.
RHETORICAL DEVICES
 Structures within language that help communicate
ideas.
 Rhetorical question
 Purpose: gets the audience thinking about an important
idea/topic.
 Allusion
 Purpose: to make connections between the reader’s life and what
the author is writing or speaking about.
 What are the 3 genres or specific texts do authors alluded to the most?
 Bible
 Greek mythology
 Shakespeare
RHETORICAL DEVICES
 Antithesis
 Sentence with phrases/clauses that present contrasting ideas.
 Purpose: to express ideas emphatically by making contrasts in order
to examine a subject and bring forth discussion/judgment.
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To err is human; to forgive is divine.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
Easy on the eyes, hard on the heart.
Speech is silver, but silence is golden.
 Parallelism
 Kind of repetition, symmetry in grammatical form AND ideas.
 Purpose: emphasize idea
 Like father, like son.
 Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your
country.
 My face is washed, my teeth are brushed, and my hair is combed.
PERSUASIVE APPEALS
 Logical appeal
 Emotional **fear, pity, vanity.
 Ethical appeal *God, sense of right and wrong.
 Appeal to association
 the writer implies that one will gain acceptance or
prestige by taking the writer’s position.
 Appeal to authority
 Call upon experts or others who warrant respect.
SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION
 Why do you think the 3 rd paragraph on page 228 becomes
more ef fective if you pause after each question?
 Why does Patrick Henry question “hope” in his speech? (Hope
is generally a positive idea. What situation causes him to
caution/question his peers about having too much hope?)
 Why do you think Henry alludes to the song of the sirens from
The Odyssey in lines 15-17? Who/what is represents the
sirens?
 Why does Henry allude the bible in line 28?