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 anecdotesWe 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.