Sometimes people try to sound objective by saying things like, “make your own decision,”
or “I’m just sharing the facts,” or “you can decide which piece of pie you want!”
But you can feel some underlying bias there.
That guy is definitely eyeing that big, delicious-looking piece of pie.
In fact, from speeches and lab reports to restaurant menus and board game instructions,
we never present facts in a perfectly unbiased manner.
Even when we work to remove bias, everything we present has some persuasive energy behind it.
So today, we’re going to talk about how to direct that energy purposefully to become better,
more effective writers in the last episode of Study Hall: Composition,
presented by Arizona State University and Crash Course. I’m Yumna Samie, let’s get started.
Many of us may feel a mental difference between persuasion and presentation.
When we’re persuading, we know we want to change minds, and we often include clear calls to action.
Let's think of presentation as the opposite of persuasion--not just giving a speech.
So when we're presenting, we might try to just "put the facts out there” and
"let them speak for themselves.”
Basically, trying to be neutral.
But no matter how much neutral language we use, presentation is still drawing attention
to something
and therefore has some persuasiveness in it.
For example, I might give a super dry report about the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat
and recent habitat loss in its area of Australia.
Even without a call to action--just by asking people to listen--I’m communicating persuasively.
After all, by presenting, I’m trying to get my audience to believe that Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombats
are interesting enough that they should pay attention to what I'm saying,
instead of texting their friend or listening to a podcast or walking away or something.
Even the most mindless school project is trying to convince the teacher to give the student
a solid grade.
We’re working to persuade people all the time.
So if we say that a piece of writing is just presenting the facts and isn't trying to persuade
anyone of anything,
we’re ignoring our responsibility to think through our project’s consequences.
Our finished work is less thought-out.
We’ve spent a lot of time in this series talking about ways to make our writing affect people,
like paying attention to the needs and interests of our readers,
appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos, and even carefully structuring arguments.
Our final episode, though, is focused on this idea that we’re acting rhetorically most of the time.
And this means that you can apply many of the persuasive writing tips we've been learning
to all of your writing.
For instance, no matter what kind of writing we're doing,
we can adjust the level of ambiguity, or possibilities for various interpretations.
Removing ambiguity is a way to commit to the statements we’re making, so our readers
understand our purpose.
This also lets our readers hold us accountable for what we’re writing.
Rather than saying, "well that’s not what I meant," and having to explain our way out
of misinterpretations,
we can write clearly to avoid confusion.
Think about when your boss writes an email saying,
"we might have some free bagels available after today’s corporate breakfast."
That'd be a little confusing and less exciting than, “I saved your team a box of bagels
from this morning’s meetings.
They’re in the fridge with your name on them.”
That clarity benefits you as a reader--now you know exactly where you stand when it comes
to those bagels, and where they are.
Removing ambiguity helps even in a situation many of us wouldn’t count as persuasive.
I mean, no one has to twist my arm to get me to eat some free bagels!
That being said, there are uses for ambiguity, like when we don’t want to commit strongly to a position
because we don’t have all the data, or when we try to show multiple perspectives to our audience.
For example, we might say that cheetahs are one of the fastest land animals that we know of...
because we know that's just running speed, not flying or snapping jaws shut or things like that.
But ambiguity is just one piece of the writing puzzle, in any situation.
To see the persuasive possibilities in any writing context, account for your rhetorical situation.
Rhetorical situations, or all the factors that affect the way our writing is received,
are still important in supposedly ‘presentation-based’ writing.
We have to think about what is possible in our medium, or the place we’re writing,
and whether we’re writing in the expected way for our context,
all the factors surrounding our choice to write.
We also think through whether or not the writing is done in a way that takes advantage of kairos,
or the opportune moment for a particular communication.
And of course, we have to think about our audience.
Even for work that tries to present ‘just the facts,’ we’re picking facts that our
audience will be open to,
or we’re figuring out which facts need to be there to communicate effectively.
We’re also trying to connect with our audience so they don't, like, fall asleep.
Thinking about your rhetorical situation can help you recognize where to make a big
or subtle change that will help get your message across.
Think about people who write for Wikipedia.
They know that overtly opinionated or unprofessional writing will quickly get flagged
and deleted by the rest of Wikipedia’s writers.
Still, they add unique, interesting facts because they do want you to keep reading their
work and staying informed.
And clicking links until it’s 2 am and you know everything there is to know about how
to make tortilla chips.
We can further zoom in on one aspect of the rhetorical situation when we try our next technique:
clarify your purpose, improve your strategies.
Identifying a clear purpose for our writing helps us see the rhetorical opportunities
in any writing task that seems more presentation-focused,
whether it's a report on Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombats or a new section in your favorite
Wikipedia article.
You can clarify your purpose by asking 2 questions:
why you're presenting and what you want to accomplish.
If you're used to forging ahead with a vague purpose,
this is your chance to be more explicit and clear!
After all, if you really know why you're writing something,
your audience will probably find it more useful too.
Then, with a clear purpose, you can dive into rhetorical strategies like appeals to ethos,
pathos, and logos.
Even in genres like scientific lab reports where we're working hard to stay as unbiased
and objective as possible,
a writer is motivated by a purpose to convince colleagues that their findings are legit
and that their department is doing work that is worth funding.
A scientific writer will use the accepted precise language to show credibility in the
field, appealing to ethos,
and include the graphs and calculations that support their claim, appealing to logos.
These strategies are all part of convincing an audience of the value of the scientific findings.
To see how a writer can synthesize everything we've been talking about, let’s check in
with a Writer in Action.
Taylor’s new job at Much-Fun Games has her writing the instruction manuals for their
latest collection of board games.
She’s new to this kind of writing, so Taylor starts the job thinking that all she’s doing
is presenting the game rules
and processes without a persuasive element.
Her boss sits down with her to talk through her first set of instructions,
and they discuss how these manuals actually do a lot of rhetorical work.
For example, they notice that, for games with a lot of rules, like “A Very Real War Strategy Game,"
it’s key to use different headings, short sentences, and both numbered and bulleted lists.
Taylor remembers giving up on games because the rules seemed too complicated,
so part of her persuasive work is showing that it will only take a few minutes to learn
even a complex game’s set up.
A few of the games, like “Build It & Break It!” and “Stairs and Steps,” are targeted
toward younger kids,
so she reframes how she describes the instructions so they can be understood by children.
Taylor also learns that some game instruction manuals are shared online, so they act like ads.
To convince people the games are worth trying out, she adds a more playful tone to some
of her instructions,
changing a heading from “Rules for Collecting Tokens” to “Show Me The Money!”
Taylor thought that she’d gotten a job doing a dry, presentation-based writing task, but
by considering her rhetorical situation,
she found that there were persuasive elements even there, and rhetorical strategies to use.
Taylor is a Writer in Action!
As we’ve hopefully driven home, the idea that writing can be "completely neutral" is an illusion,
since every kind of writing has a purpose of some kind.
Asking ourselves why we are writing and what we want to achieve is a great way to remove that illusion,
since it makes us work more consciously and effectively to share our messages.
Knowledge about writing really is power.
When you think systematically about writing, from book reports to your own novel,
you get to make conscious decisions about how to improve them.
It’s a great feeling to watch changes in your thought process alter your outcomes over time.
Advocating for more conscious decision-making about writing is one of the things we’ve
been trying to do with these videos.
We can be more influential when we follow the writing process,
pay attention to our argumentation,
and notice all the factors that affect our rhetorical situation.
When you have the tools and techniques you need to improve as a writer, you can
more effectively accomplish a wide variety of goals.
But remember what we’ve said from the beginning: you’re already a writer.
You, like all of us, are just honing your skills to become even stronger -- and good
luck with the next steps in your writing journey.
Thanks for watching Study Hall: Composition, which is produced by Arizona State University
and the Crash Course team at Complexly.
If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us here in Study Hall,
be sure to subscribe. You can learn more about ASU and the videos produced by Crash Course
in the links in the description.