Persuasive context

By persuasive context, we mean the key situational elements that set up an act or process of persuasion.

A persuasive situation has five main elements:

The first three of these elements are what we could call our 'givens', meaning they are what they are, nobody has any real control over them.

The last two are choices over which the speaker has some control.

Persuasive speech & writing are more formally called rhetoric.

Persuasive context is more formally called rhetorical context.

We've used "persuasion" as our base term because we believe it's more accessible, but the terms are mostly interchangeable.

Let's take a look at each of these elements in turn.