Introduction

In our lesson on persuasive context, we described persuasion in terms of:

A speaker with an issue
who wants to influence an audience
towards a particular goal at a particular moment in time.

We also talked about how that persuasive goal usually boils down to changing how the audience thinks, feels, or behaves.

Analysing the persuasive context tells us who, what, when, where & why.

This is very cool and important information!

But we're still left with the question of how: how does the speaker persuade the audience towards their goal?

It's worth reminding ourselves when "persuasion" is necessary.

For example, one way to get people to do what you want is to command them.

If the speaker has enough power, the audience will obey.

Power can come from all sorts of sources: money, status, allies, physical and numerical size... Power is a whole topic in its own right.

But if the speaker doesn't have the power to command, or they don't want to command (meaning, they genuinely don't want to compel the audience), then they might use persuasion.

This means that, in a persuasive context, the speaker often has less power than the audience, or maybe equal power.

(You might wonder why political leaders try to persuade the public all the time, given they have a lot more power than the average citizen, but the citizenry has the strength of numbers, which is something of an equaliser.)

Persuasion is social, and it appears when people need or want to influence each other without using force.

We use persuasion in all sorts of domains, including:

Politics: persuading others to vote for or against propositions
Law: persuading judges and juries to find for or against clients
Culture: persuading people to value or dismiss cultural products or practices
Markets: persuading people to buy and sell particular goods and services
Everyday relationships: persuading the people you live and work with to do everything your way, which is of course the right way!

In persuasion, a speaker has three levers they can use to tilt the audience towards agreement:

Character
Emotion
Argument

These levers can be used individually or in combination.

And they are listed here in what is, arguably, their order of importance, with character being the most important lever—but we'll explore that as we go.

We could do many lessons on each persuasive lever. (We already have several lessons on argumentation.)

The goal of this lesson is to introduce you to each of the levers and show you enough examples that you get a sense of the breadth and depth of each one.

There'll be a lot of nuances that we have to skip, so don't be surprised if you have questions.
There is also a lot of overlap between the concepts we'll be exploring, and while we'll try to give you a clear framework, not everything will fit neatly into little boxes. So expect some fuzziness!

Because persuasion is about influencing others, it always raises ethical questions.

In whose interest does the Speaker persuade the Audience?
If the Speaker succeeds, does the Audience benefit or suffer?

Living in a complex society, people need to influence each other. But whether that influence is good or bad is a neverending question.

Some persuasion succeeds, and some (possibly most) persuasion fails.

Even if a speaker uses all the levers we describe in this lesson, and uses them well, it's no guarantee that they will influence the audience the way they want.

Language has persuasive power, whether in speech or in writing.

But image, movement, sound, and physical sensation are also powerfully persuasive, and the most effective persuasive messages combine all of these media and senses.

Obviously, since this is Writelike, so you'll be writing a fair bit in this lesson.

But we want to acknowledge up front that other media are hugely important.

Persuasive levers 1-4: Character, Emotion, Argument, & Combined