Two letters ask a town council to keep its only public pool open. One opens with the pool's repair budget and the cost per swimmer; the other opens with the summer a nine-year-old learned to swim there. Both writers know the same facts, but each is betting on what the council members believe, value, and need, and you can read that bet back out of the text.
Reading the writer's picture of the audience
Topic 1.1 had you name a text's audience. The next question is what the writer thinks that audience is like. A writer never sees the readers. They work from a picture of them, and every choice in the text is made for the people in that picture. Four things make up the picture:
- Beliefs: what the audience thinks is true. ("Paving the road will raise our taxes." "Teenagers can't be trusted with phones in class.")
- Values: what the audience thinks matters or is good: safety, fairness, thrift, tradition, independence, loyalty to a group, freedom, faith, progress.
- Needs: what the audience has to get from the text before it can act: information, reassurance that a risk is small, a practical step, permission, a way to change its mind without looking foolish.
- Background: what the audience knows and has lived through, which decides what must be explained.
You can't interview the writer, so you infer the picture from what the writer does. The clues are the same in almost every text:
| What the writer does | What it shows about the writer's picture of the audience |
|---|---|
| Explains a term, a person, or an event | The writer thinks the audience lacks that background |
| Leaves something unexplained | The writer thinks it is shared knowledge |
| Concedes a point or answers an objection before anyone raises it | The writer expects the audience to hold that objection |
| Spends the most space proving one claim | That claim is the one the writer thinks the audience is least ready to accept |
| Names a value ("as parents," "as taxpayers," "as veterans," "as scientists") | The writer thinks the audience already holds it and will act on it |
| Says "we" and "our" | The writer wants the audience to see itself in the same group as the writer |
| Takes a deferential, blunt, warm, or formal tone | The writer thinks that relationship is the one this audience will accept |
The concession row deserves the most attention. A writer who says "I am not asking you to give up your cars" has heard, or imagined, an audience that suspects exactly that request. Concessions are the clearest window into what a writer thinks the audience fears or resents.
Explaining how a choice reflects the audience means connecting three things in order: the choice, the audience trait it answers, and the effect the choice is meant to have on that audience. A sentence that does all three looks like this: "Because the council members see themselves as careful stewards of public money, the writer opens with the cost per swimmer, presenting the pool as a bargain before asking them to spend on it." A sentence that names only the choice ("The writer uses statistics") explains nothing.
Reaching an audience's emotions and values
People are moved by their own values, not by the writer's. So a writer who wants something from an audience usually frames the request in terms that audience already cares about. A cyclist arguing for a protected bike lane on Main Street tells parents that it keeps children off the sidewalk and away from traffic; she tells the downtown business association that people on bikes stop at shops that drivers speed past. The bike lane is the same. The value it is attached to changes with the audience.
Sometimes the move is subtler: the writer points to a value the audience already claims and shows that the audience is failing to live up to it. A student writing to a school board that calls itself committed to "every student's success" can argue that a 6:40 a.m. bus pickup contradicts that commitment. The board can't easily reject the argument without rejecting its own stated value. Douglass's 1852 speech in Topic 1.1 makes this move on a national scale, holding the ideals his listeners celebrated on the Fourth of July up against slavery.
Emotion works the same way. A writer can't make an audience feel something it has no reason to feel, so the choices that carry emotion (a single named person's story, a concrete detail, a scene placed at the start, a blunt short sentence after a long one) are aimed at feelings the audience is already capable of. When you explain an emotional choice, be exact about which emotion: pride, shame, fear, hope, grief, indignation, affection, guilt. Then say why this audience would feel it. "The story makes readers sad" is a weak explanation. "The story of a boy pulled from the river in 1998, the summer before the pool opened, when the river was the only place in town to swim, makes the council members afraid that closing the pool would send children back to the river, and that they would be the ones who brought back that risk" is a strong one.
Emotional restraint is a choice too. A writer addressing an audience that prides itself on being practical, such as engineers, farmers, or a budget committee, may state a painful fact flatly and move on, because dwelling on it would read as manipulation to those readers. When a passage is oddly unemotional about something sad, ask what the writer thinks the audience would distrust.
The appeals: three ways an argument earns agreement
The appeals, or modes of persuasion, are the broad ways an argument works on an audience. Aristotle named three in his Rhetoric in the fourth century BCE, and the names are still useful.
- Ethos is persuasion through the writer's credibility. Readers accept a claim partly because they trust the person making it. Credibility comes from expertise and experience, but also from character shown in the text itself: being fair to opponents, admitting limits, showing goodwill toward the audience, and sharing the audience's values.
- Pathos is persuasion through the audience's emotions. It is about what the audience feels, not about the writer being emotional.
- Logos is persuasion through reasoning and evidence: facts, statistics, examples, cause and effect, and the logical steps that connect them to the claim.
Three things about the appeals matter more than the definitions.
First, an appeal is a job a choice does, not a kind of sentence. One choice often does several jobs at once. A nurse who describes her own night shift, when two nurses covered thirty patients, gives evidence of understaffing (logos), shows she knows the ward firsthand (ethos), and puts the reader beside a patient whose call light stays on (pathos).
Second, every appeal depends on the audience. A quotation from a famous economist builds credibility only with readers who trust that economist. A statistic persuades readers who believe numbers more than stories. A patriotic appeal works on an audience that shares the patriotism and may backfire on one that doesn't. That is why you can't explain an appeal without saying who it is aimed at.
Third, writers build ethos inside the text, not only with credentials. A conceded point, a modest tone, an admission of uncertainty, or a fair summary of the other side can make a writer more trustworthy to a doubtful audience than a list of degrees would. The third worked example below shows a speaker who gains authority by admitting he might be wrong.
Worked examples
A beekeeper posted this letter on the bulletin board of a fruit growers' cooperative.
To the orchard growers of Fenn Valley: Your trees set fruit because something carries pollen from blossom to blossom, and in this valley most of that something lives in my hives. I have kept bees on the ridge above Route 9 for twenty-two years, and I have never once told you how to run an orchard. I am not asking you to stop spraying. I am asking you to change when. A spray applied in the evening, after the bees have gone home, has dried by morning; the same spray at ten in the morning lands on the foragers. Last May I lost eleven hives in the week after the bloom spray. If you can spray after six in the evening during the two weeks of bloom, I will post the bloom dates here and keep my bees off any orchard that asks. Anna Pruitt, Ridge Road Apiary
What does the writer assume the growers believe, value, and need? Point to the choice that shows each.
Show solution
Beliefs. She assumes the growers think spraying is necessary and that their orchards are their own business. The evidence is two pre-emptive answers: "I am not asking you to stop spraying" answers the objection she expects most, and "I have never once told you how to run an orchard" answers the resentment of an outsider giving orders.
Values. She assumes they value their harvest above all, so the letter opens with their trees setting fruit, not with her bees. The bees enter the argument as the growers' pollinators. She also assumes they value fair dealing among neighbors, which is why she offers something in return: posting the dates and keeping her bees away from any orchard that asks.
Needs. They need a change that is concrete and cheap. She gives a time (after six), a period (two weeks), and a reason the change costs them nothing (the spray dries overnight).
The appeals, and why they suit this audience. Twenty-two years on the ridge is ethos, and so is the restraint of the second sentence. The drying spray is logos: a cause-and-effect explanation a practical grower can check. Eleven lost hives is the only emotional fact, and she states it in one flat sentence. For growers who pride themselves on being practical, a dramatic description of dying bees would sound like sentiment, and a plain number sounds like a business loss, which they understand.
Notice that every answer names a choice in the text. "She assumes they are stubborn" with no evidence would earn nothing.
The following is an original passage written for this lesson, in the form of an exam passage. It imagines a speech delivered in 1908 by the president of a small-town merchants' association to its members, who were deciding whether to help pay for paving the town's main street.
Gentlemen, I know the figure that is on every mind in this room, because it was on mine: four thousand dollars, to be raised by this Association and matched by the county. I have kept a store on Front Street for nineteen years, and I have never spent a dollar I could not account for. I do not propose to start tonight.
So let me account for this one. Every one of you has stood in his doorway on a wet Saturday in March and watched the farm wagons turn back at the bottom of Front Street, where the mud is deepest, and go on to Harlan, where the street is brick. Mr. Doyle tells me his March receipts were a third of his June receipts. Mine were less than that. We have not been losing that trade to Harlan's merchants, who are no cleverer than we are. We have been losing it to Harlan's street.
A paved street will not sell a single bolt of cloth. It will only bring the customer to the door, which is all any of us has ever asked.
Question 1. The speaker's statement that he has "never spent a dollar I could not account for" primarily serves to
- (A) remind the audience of his long success as a merchant
- (B) show that he shares his listeners' caution about spending, so that his support for the expense will carry weight with them
- (C) suggest that other members have spent the Association's money carelessly
- (D) acknowledge that the paving may not repay its cost
Question 2. The speaker most likely assumes that his audience
- (A) doubts that the town's merchants are as capable as Harlan's
- (B) values thrift and will spend only when shown a likely return
- (C) has not noticed that farm wagons avoid Front Street in wet weather
- (D) wants the county to pay the full cost of the paving
Question 3. The claim in the final paragraph that a paved street "will not sell a single bolt of cloth" mainly serves to
- (A) limit the speaker's claim to one a cautious audience can accept
- (B) express the speaker's doubt that paving is worthwhile
- (C) shift the argument from reasoning to an appeal to emotion
- (D) criticize members who expect the street to solve all their problems
Show solution
1. (B). The speaker's first sentence names the cost "on every mind in this room," so he expects an audience reluctant to spend. Presenting himself as the most careful spender among them builds ethos with exactly that audience: if he supports the expense, it must be sound. (A) is true in a way (nineteen years on Front Street) but misses the function: the sentence is about caution, not success. (C) reads an accusation into a sentence that is about the speaker alone. (D) contradicts the speech, which goes on to argue that the paving will pay.
2. (B). The opening fixes on the dollar figure, the speaker promises to "account for" it, and the second paragraph offers a return in trade. All of that is aimed at listeners who value thrift. (C) is the tempting wrong answer for a careless reader, but the passage says the reverse: "Every one of you has stood in his doorway" and watched the wagons turn back. The speaker assumes they have seen it and builds on that shared memory. (A) is the opposite of his claim that Harlan's merchants are "no cleverer than we are," which flatters the audience. (D) has no support: the plan already has the county matching the Association's share.
3. (A). The sentence concedes what paving can't do, and that modesty is the point. A cautious audience distrusts large promises, so the speaker claims only that the street will "bring the customer to the door," which every merchant can picture and believe. (B) mistakes a concession for doubt; the speaker still supports the paving. (C) gets the appeal wrong: the sentence is a limit on a claim, which is reasoning, and it also builds credibility. (D) invents a target the passage never names.
The method. Each question turned on the audience the opening sentence reveals: merchants worried about four thousand dollars. Once you know who the speaker thinks he is talking to, the function of each choice follows.
On September 17, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, then 81, the oldest delegate and one of the most famous men in America, asked his fellow delegates to sign the finished Constitution. Several delegates still had serious objections, and three of them (Edmund Randolph, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry) refused to sign that day. Franklin wrote the speech, and James Wilson read it aloud for him. These are its opening and closing sentences.
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. . . .
On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.
Benjamin Franklin, speech of September 17, 1787, as recorded in James Madison's notes of the Federal Convention
Write a body paragraph explaining how Franklin's choices address the beliefs and values of the delegates who still doubted the Constitution.
Show solution
A model paragraph:
Franklin turns the doubting delegates' objections from a reason to refuse into a reason to sign. Those delegates believed their objections were sound, and they valued their own independent judgment; a plea to drop the objections would have asked them to admit they were wrong, in front of the whole Convention. Franklin asks for something smaller. By confessing that there are "several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve," he places himself among the doubters, so the oldest and one of the most celebrated men in the room shares their reservations instead of dismissing them. He then gives them a reason to hold any opinion loosely, his long experience of having "to change opinions even on important subjects," which lets a delegate keep his objections and still sign. The closing request repeats the move: Franklin asks each objector to "doubt a little of his own infallibility" and to do it "with me," so that signing becomes something the delegates do in Franklin's company. For men proud of their judgment, his modesty offers a way to change course without losing face.
Why this paragraph works.
- Its first sentence is a claim about what Franklin's choices do, not a summary of what he says.
- It names the audience's belief (their objections are sound) and value (independent judgment) before explaining any choice, so every later sentence has something to connect to.
- Each quotation is short, embedded in the writer's own sentence, and followed by commentary that says what it does to this audience.
- It never uses the word "ethos," yet it analyzes how Franklin builds credibility by admitting he might be wrong. Scorers credit the explanation, and a label adds nothing to it.
- A weaker paragraph would say: "Franklin uses ethos because he is old and experienced, and pathos when he says 'with me.'" That identifies devices and explains nothing about why they would move these delegates.
Where students lose points
On the exam
Multiple-choice reading questions test this skill through the function of a choice and the writer's assumptions: what a concession, an anecdote, or a reference "serves to" do, which values a passage appeals to, and what the writer "most likely assumes" about the audience. Read the italic introduction for who the audience is, then let the text's concessions and emphases tell you what the writer thinks that audience believes. In the rhetorical analysis essay, the prompt names the speaker, the occasion, and usually the audience. The essays that score highest explain how specific choices work on that audience given what it believes and values, and the vocabulary of ethos, pathos, and logos is optional. Topic 2.2 turns this around: you choose appeals and evidence for an audience of your own.
Check yourself
Question 1
A writer urging members of a retirees' club to vote for a school construction bond opens by recalling the one-room schoolhouses many of them attended and the taxpayers who paid for those buildings decades ago. What does this opening most clearly suggest the writer assumes about the audience?
- A
They have no children or grandchildren in the local schools.
- B
They value having been helped by an earlier generation and may feel bound to return the favor.
- C
They believe the bond will cost them less than the writer claims.
- D
They are unaware that the current school buildings are old.
Show answer
B
Reminding the retirees that someone else paid for their schooling appeals to a value (reciprocity, fairness across generations) that the writer expects them to hold. Choice A is the tempting one: the writer may well suspect it, and the opening is a way around it, but the opening itself appeals to their memories and sense of obligation, not to their family situation.
- A
Question 2
A city planner with no special credentials writes to residents who distrust the city's plan to move a bus stop. In her second paragraph she lists the two strongest objections residents have raised and says that one of them is correct and has changed the plan. Explain how this choice could build her credibility with this audience.
Show answer
By stating the residents' objections fairly and admitting one of them changed the plan, she shows that she listens and is willing to give ground, which makes a distrustful audience more likely to believe the rest of what she says. Her credibility (ethos) comes from the fairness and goodwill she shows in the text, not from credentials.
Ethos is built inside a text as well as brought to it. For an audience that suspects the city ignores residents, a concession is direct evidence against that suspicion.
Question 3
Which sentence from a student's rhetorical analysis best explains how a writer's choice addresses the audience?
- A
The writer uses pathos and logos throughout the letter to persuade the reader.
- B
The writer includes a statistic about wait times, which is an example of logos.
- C
Because the hospital board prides itself on efficiency, the writer presents the new clinic's longer hours as a way to cut costly emergency-room visits, turning a request for spending into a savings plan.
- D
The writer's letter is very persuasive because it contains many different appeals to the audience.
Show answer
C
Only C connects a specific choice to a specific audience value and says what the choice does for that audience. B is the tempting one because it names a real choice, but it stops at a label and never explains why the statistic would move this board.
- A
Question 4
A veterinarian writing for a magazine read mostly by dog breeders reports that one in four puppies in a large study carried a heart defect linked to a common breeding practice. She gives the figure in one sentence and goes straight to how breeders can test for the defect. What is the most likely reason for this restraint?
- A
She doubts that the figure is accurate.
- B
She thinks breeders will respond to a practical problem and solution, and might dismiss a dramatic appeal as an attack on their practices.
- C
She wants to avoid making an emotional appeal of any kind because emotional appeals are unfair.
- D
She assumes breeders already know the figure and need no evidence.
Show answer
B
An audience whose own practice is being criticized is likely to be defensive, so the writer states the fact plainly and moves to what they can do, which treats them as professionals. D is tempting because she does say little about the figure, but she still reports it as news; and A has no support in the description.
- A