Consider your Audience
As you craft your op-ed and political cartoon, you will need to consider the devices, strategies, and language appropriate for your audience. Below is a small list of ideas to get you started; however, you may also refer to handouts given in class and The Language of Composition textbook.
- Credibility and logic (appeals to ethos and logos)
- Statistics
- Appeals to emotion (pathos)
- Figurative language – tropes
- Cohesion: greater sentence variety (loose and periodic)
- Powerful “attention getting” open
- Detail
- Statistics
- Repetition
- Schemes of balance
- Diction appropriate for audience and purpose
- Narrow rhetorical questions
- A more complete handout of other devices and strategies.
Audience
Those who agree/Base
Fence sitters/Undecided
Those who disagree/Opposition
- Persuasive – “Call for action”
- Anticipate and address anything that might cause support to falter
- Supply strong evidence to support your position
Fence sitters/Undecided
- Powerful attention getter: startling statistic, narrow rhetorical question
- Address and refute or qualify opposing arguments
- Strong supporting evidence in favor of your position
- Appeals to logic, credibility and emotion
- Arrangement: strongest point or evidence last
Those who disagree/Opposition
- Powerful attention getter pointing out absurdity of opposition’s position (without insult)
- Credibility
- Strong evidence refuting opposing position
- Strong evidence in favor of your position
- Reasonable speculation of ramifications
- Possible bandwagon approach