3.5 Everything’s Persuasion
Erin Kelly; Sara Humphreys; Nancy Ami; and Natalie Boldt
When it comes to academic writing, one can assume that the purpose of every piece of writing is to make an argument – although the term “argument” in this context might need some definition. The title of this particular section is a play on the title of a well-known and widely used writing textbook by Drs. Andrea Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz titled Everything’s an Argument.[1] Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz’s title relies on a rhetorician’s understanding of argument. They recognize that the term argument doesn’t only mean getting into a fight with someone. Rather, their point is that in academic writing, debates or arguments over ideas are common. While Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz’s textbook is excellent, perhaps there is another way to understand persuasion that’s more suitable for undergraduate students studying in Canada.
Remember back in Section 3.3, we introduced you to the rhetorical triangle? If you take a look at the rhetorical triangle, you will see that in the midst of audience, subject, and writer/speaker is the word purpose. Everyone writes for a variety of purposes but generally the goals are to inform, persuade, and perhaps entertain. In academic writing, it’s much more important to inform and persuade (with an emphasis on inform). The triangle doesn’t represent one form of balanced communication but all the ways balance can occur within specific contexts (and those are vast and plentiful). In the context of academic writing, rhetorical balance can take many forms but most often, it’s an emphasis on sharing credible, well-tested data that is explained with clarity of purpose and audience engagement.
Easy, right? Well, academic writing can be made much less of a mystery once you grasp both the concept of genre (covered in chapter two) and the basics of rhetorical practice. One of those basics is the rhetorical triangle, which we introduced you to earlier in this chapter. As a brief refresher, the rhetorical triangle maps out how persuasion operates (see Fig. 3.1).
Let’s turn to the idea of persuasion rather than argument just for a minute and think about the persuader and those who the persuader wants to persuade (otherwise known as the rhetor and the audience). Rhetorician Kenneth Burke redefined the concepts of argument and persuasion to better suit Western culture. In Western cultures, relationships are often unequal and so Burke argued that persuasion is more akin to a historical idea of courtship rather than an argument between equal parties:
An audience’s degree of adherence to the rhetor’s argument can vary greatly. By contrast, courtship focuses primarily on the unequal relationship between the persuader and those being persuaded, rather than employ means generally considered “persuasive.” Through courtship, the “courtier” already commands a certain “captivation” of the audience. This “courted” audience thus yearns to transcend the gap of social e