Goal

What does the speaker want to achieve through their persuasion?

They have an issue, they want to change the status quo—but how, exactly? What's their goal?

Speakers can have all sorts of goals, but we could classify them as:

Change what the audience thinks
Change how the audience feels
Change what the audience does

Arguably, each of these goals is more difficult than the last because it requires more effort from the audience.

Let's see if we can classify some examples.

First, Darth & Luke: what is Darth Vader's goal in this scene? How would you classify it?

Luke skywalker defiant gantry

(From The Empire Strikes Back)

Change what the audience thinks.
Change how the audience feels.
Change what the audience does.

What is Darth Vader's goal & how would you classify it?

Darth Vader wants Luke to join the dark side of the Force.
This means he wants Luke to change his behaviour (which would also require changing his thoughts & feelings).

What's the goal of this ad?

Print ad Frontline dog fleas

Change what the audience thinks.
Change how the audience feels.
Change what the audience does.

What is the persuasive goal of this ad? How would you classify it?

The goal is to get you to buy Frontline flea & tick spray.
If you don't already buy Frontline, that means changing what you do.

Both of these examples are about persuading an audience to change what they do, but that doesn't mean they're the same!

It's much harder to get Luke Skywalker to join the dark side than to get dog owners to switch their brand of flea spray because Luke will do anything to maintain the status quo (including jumping off that gantry).

On the other hand, that doesn't mean it's easy to get people to change their brand of flea treatment.

Dog owners might prefer the price or packaging of another brand, or they might simply not want to change their routine just because they saw an ad.

Here's the heading and subheading for an article about one woman's experience with getting a genetic test for her newborn baby.

Based only on these headlines, what do you think the persuasive goal of the article will be?

Vox article Why I'm glad my newborn received a false positive test

(From Vox)

Change what the audience thinks.
Change how the audience feels.
Change what the audience does.

What is the persuasive goal of this article? How would you classify it?

You can read the actual article if you want more context, but even from the headline and subheading we can make a good guess:

The article wants the audience to think that genetic screenings are good.
It wants some of the audience to feel good about the results even when they are stressful and incorrect (which is what a false positive result would be).
The goal is not to get the audience to do anything, except perhaps support public institutions as they continue to offer free genetic screening for newborns.

Speaking of parents, children, and diseases, here is a letter written by a father to his 10-year-old daughter in 1921, shortly after they found out she had epilepsy and she was hospitalised:

November 1921

Dear Margaret,

This is only a little letter from your daddy to say he thinks about you hours and hours and he knows that there was never a princess or a fairy worth so much love. We are starting on a long journey and hard fight — you and mother and daddy — and we are going to go on slowly, quietly, hand in hand, the three of us, never giving up. And so we are going to win. Slowly, quietly, never giving up, we are going to win.

Daddy

More Letters of Note

Change what the audience thinks.
Change how the audience feels.
Change what the audience does.

What is the persuasive goal of this letter? How would you classify it?

The goal is to make his daughter feel better.
He wants her to feel brave and determined and to believe that, as a family, they will overcome her illness.

We could spend all day analysing the goals of different persuasive speakers, but the main thing to take from this page is that the speaker has to choose a goal, and some goals are harder to achieve than others.

For example, Darth Vader might have had more success if his goal had just been to persuade Luke to believe that the dark side might not be so bad, and maybe consider joining at a later date. Instead, he pushed Luke too far.

In contrast, the article about genetic screening chose a relatively modest goal of making the audience feel good about genetic screening. It might have struggled if it had tried to convince the audience to actually get up, go out, and get screened for genetic illnesses themselves.

Understanding the speaker, issue, & audience can help you evaluate a speaker's goal, or choose a realistic & achievable goal of your own.

To practice coming up with persuasive goals, choose a speaker in this image and describe three persuasive goals they might have, one of each type (think, feel, do).

a large crocodile contentedly nestled inside an empty aquarium. The store manager

Change what the audience thinks.
Change how the audience feels.
Change what the audience does.

Choose a speaker & describe three persuasive goals they might have (to change thoughts, feelings, & behaviour). Which do you think would be hardest?

Persuasive context