Persuasion

We now come to what might be considered the heart of rhetoric, which is how to use our speech and writing to convince others of things we would like them to think, feel, or do. I hope that by now I’ve made clear why we didn’t jump straight into persuasion, as central as it may be. If we aren’t clear on our values and ethics, persuasion becomes a matter of mere expediency, twisting and turning to whatever shape suits our self-interest. Even with values nailed down, though, if we can’t think through how set goals and pursue them effectively, then we will not know when or how to deploy our persuasive efforts to greatest effect. And if we haven’t learned anything worthwhile, what will we have to share that others find worth listening to? One last thing. Since persuasion is so core to rhetoric, it is a topic I expect we’ll return to time and again from different angles and in different depths, but for now, we’ll do a fairly quick overview.

So, we had to do some ground work before we could get here, but with it laid, we can get right to the rhetoricians greatest concern: his audience.

Understand to Whom You are Speaking

In order to persuade others, you must first understand them, which makes knowing your audience the most crucial skill for the persuasive communicator. What are they like? What things do they care about? How do they prefer to receive and process information? What do they find credible and compelling, and what do they not care about?

What do they want?

This last question is likely the most useful to understand, because if you know what your audience wants, you can often infer answers to many of the other questions. Even more importantly, if you know what your audience wants, you can figure out how you can help them get it, and then make that clear to them. Ultimately, persuasion is about making the case that doing what you are trying to get them to will in some way align with what they themselves want, and it’s a lot easier to make that case when you a) genuinely know what they want, and b) can actually help them get it, which you’re more likely to be in a position to do if you’ve thought about it and arranged to be in a position to do so.

Know Your Goal in Communicating

Even though we want to begin by considering our audience and what they want, persuasion presupposes that we also want something, and we’re trying to get others on board with getting it. We spent the last two posts going into strategy and thinking through our goals, so we won’t need to spend too much time on the subject here, other than to take note of the fact that as you strive to persuade, you want to keep its role in the overall strategic picture in mind. For example, if you offer an inducement of some kind (say, owing a favor or agreeing to take on some work), how does that affect your overall goals? Say that you are a teenager saving up money so you can take your girlfriend on dates. Taking a job that makes you work every Friday and Saturday might get you the money, but it gets in the way of what you wanted the money for. Likewise, if you offer to work longer hours in an effort to persuade your boss to let you work from home more, maybe you’ve lost what you were actually after if it was more freedom from work.

So, any time you are planning to write something, give a talk, or otherwise communicate, it’s helpful to reflect on which higher order ends its helping you to achieve, whether it might in any way be counter-productive, and what other means might be put to the same ends.

The other aspect of strategy as we’ve defined it that it’s useful to keep in mind is uncertainty. One way of thinking about why we want to understand our audience as well as possible is because we are trying to reduce the uncertainty under which we have to make decisions about what to say, how to say it, and so forth. As we’ve discussed, we can’t ever totally eliminate uncertainty, but it’s helpful to stay in the habit of trying to identify as much of what is uncertain as we can, whether we can reduce that uncertainty, and how we might mitigate any potentially negative outcomes.

Logos Ethos and Pathos

While there are several ways to think about what goes into a persuasive speech or piece of writing, as good Renaissance Men, we will turn to the Classical answer, provided by Aristotle: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos – Logic

Logos is the rational, logical content of your piece, the what that you are talking about. Many of us tend to think of this as all that really matters when it comes to communicating, but as we will see when we examine the other two legs of the stool, facts, figures, and logic are necessary, but not sufficient. To get good at the aspects of speechcraft that rely on logos it is helpful to understand logical reasoning, as well as logical fallacies and how to avoid them. Having a good, solid grasp of basic logic and causation helps you to better understand what does and does not constitute evidence for your claims, how to present it in arguments that others can follow, and how to convey the why and how of your argument.

Another useful tool for conveying logos that is less reliant on formal logic is to make sure that what you have to say is structured clearly. The good old five paragraph essay actually began life as the standard way of preparing a speech: introduction, three main points, conclusion. By now, you’ve likely noticed that my posts here tend to have a lot of headers and sub-headers. That is because I try to make the structure of my posts clear to you, so that hopefully the thinking behind the writing is easier to grasp.

Ethos – Credibility

Our second consideration when striving to persuade others has less to do with our message and more to do with the messenger, that is to say, ourselves. Ethos in this case means something like “credibility.” In other words, what is it about you that makes your audience either want to listen to you or not. And since the word “ethics” is derived from ethos, it should be clear that all of our work up front working out how to live up to our values was perhaps not so far off from the “rhetorical” matters after all. Following your values and living ethically builds up your personal credibility, which is essential, but is of diminishing usefulness as you move out to further and further concentric circles of folks who know you less and less well. As you get away from those who know you personally, or at least know your work, then you get into your reputation. Luckily, acting ethically is also a great way to build the kind of reputation you want to have, but keep in mind that how you treat others can often get around to far more folks than just those present. Lastly, if you are communicating with an audience totally unfamiliar with you, you may have to rely to some degree on credibility “markers.” These are things that suggest that you ought to be credible, but don’t actually prove it. Things like college degrees, certifications, getting selected to speak at an event, or even just dressing sharply are the kind of shortcuts we rely on for assessing someone’s credibility in an absence of other information. These things can be a helpful supplement to the core work of becoming actually credible by knowing your stuff and walking the walk, but they’re not a substitute by themselves.

Pathos – Emotions

When it comes to motivating action of any kind, logos and ethos can only get us so far: I’ve got a great plan and you believe that I’m competent to come up with it, but do you care? Emotions, or pathos, are what get us to actually do things. We buy a course because we are excited about the opportunities they might open up, or we buy the ticket insurance because we are scared something could come up at work and we’ll have to cancel our vacation. Most decisions we make most of the time are driven primarily by emotion. Now, as an aspiring Renaissance Man, I believe that the ability to think rationally can and should be cultivated, but it is helpful to recognize and respect the role that emotions and less-conscious aspects of our psyche play (sharp-eyed readers might note a certain correspondence between this three-part division and another one we’ve discussed before).

Because emotions are such powerful drivers of action, learning how to arouse or cultivate the emotions that will drive the actions you seek is powerful, but dangerous. “I intentionally created an emotional state in you so that you would take a desired action” would make a pretty good definition of “manipulation.” On the other hand, it’s also a pretty good description of a rousing halftime speech or a date that ends with a kiss. As we’ve been wrestling with throughout these posts, fundamentally, rhetorical technique is a form of power, and you need at least some power to live in the world, but power can be abused. When it comes to stirring up the emotions of your audience towards a specific end, the line between “reasonable” and “downright slimy” can sometimes get murky.

A few guidelines that I follow to try to avoid falling onto the wrong side of that line:

First, don’t lie. The logos of your argument should not contradict the ethos or pathos, but it should certainly not be twisted to support the other two. Leaving things out is a gray area here, as there is such a thing as lying by omission, but there’s also such a thing as editing and selection. Likewise with euphemistic language or other forms of verbal camouflage – can sometimes be used well and ethically, but sometimes less so, so be careful.

Secondly, and this might just be an extension of the first, be wary of trying to surreptitiously incite emotions that aren’t obviously what your message is about. The classic example of this would be the way that advertisements for everything put in stuff to make you think about sex, even though the product has nothing to do with sex. They know that sex is a powerful motivator, and they want to trigger that (literal) attraction, but attach it to breath mints or car insurance, or whatever. So, try not to do that kind of stuff. Don’t write something ostensibly reassuring that’s actually meant to make people feel scared, don’t express pity when you actually are trying to arouse contempt, and so forth.

Thirdly, tread very carefully around the “negative” emotions like anger, fear, and hatred. These are all normal, healthy human emotions that are appropriate in some times and circumstances, but they can be very strong and hard to keep consistent with your logos and ethos. If you’re that coach giving the halftime pep talk, you might want to piss your guys off somewhat, but you don’t want them to go out there and start fights with the other team or something.

Fourth, and again, this might be another extension of the “don’t lie” guideline, but I try to avoid expressing emotions I don’t actually feel or trying to get the audience to feel emotions that I don’t share. If there’s some reason I want to make my audience sad, well, I likely ought to be sad too, and actually so. If I’m trying to get you to laugh, it should be something I actually find funny. I have this guideline as a corrective to the distancing and alienation the intentional, strategic approach we’re learning here can cause if you’re not careful. If I realize that making the audience sad could help me achieve my goal (like those Sarah McLachlan commercials for a charity that helps abused animals), I’m a lot less likely to approach that like a creepy manipulator if I make sure I’m genuinely feeling it too.

Wrapping Up – Know Your Audience and Know Your Goal

If you know what you’re trying to accomplish and you know who you’re speaking to, you can much more effectively accomplish what you want. I’m reminded of Sun Tzu’s maxim “if you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,” though I’ll admit that’s a bit unfortunate for equating your audience with your enemy. In some ways, everything else in rhetoric falls out of knowing your goal and your audience, and then using that knowledge as effectively as possible.