In a persuasive letter or document the author does not ponder over who is going to be his audience. There is a clear message and audience because without a distinct message and audience it would take away from the document being persuasive. In “Letter to President Clinton on Iraq”, the audience is the President of the United States and the general public that reads New American Century. However if the authors of the letter wanted to persuade the United Nations to take action on Saddam Hussein they would have to take a less opinionated view on the issue and bring empirical evidence on why action must be taken.
Constructing the audience would require research on the issue in regards to all the countries in the United Nations. Instead of focusing just on American policy the writer would redirect the issue to a world issue. If the tone was shifted from an urgent to matter of fact, the audience is more likely to agree that the power removal must take place. The audience is made up of state heads and informed individuals on world policy, the argument must be compelling and appeal to their logos. Instead of disparaging the UN, this letter would have to make larger claims that the world would be threatened. The larger and more solid claim that is given will convince the audience of the message, no mask needed. With such an educated audience facts, findings, and statistics would help the letter show how serious the problem of Saddam Hussein is. With the instability of the Middle East pointed out in the original letter, the new letter could take that focus and enhance it. The UN stands for peace and diplomacy throughout the world. The argument that the Middle East will collapse without intervention in Iraq could be explored more within a new letter to the UN. The writer can call on the responsibility of the world’s largest policy-making agency to fix a problem that is continuous within the world arena.
Persuasive writing, especially in the political sphere, must make distinct claims that back the initial opinion. The audience construction is the most important part of persuasive writing because the audience is what drives writer. Ong would argue that the direct approach of the original letter was a mistake to the audience and its’ intended and implied readers; however the audience would not accept anything indirect at the UN or the White House. The refocusing of the letter to the UN would allow for more compelling statements to be made and be expanded and empirical evidence to show the problem in its’ entirety.
I am wondering whether the writer of a persuasive article might need to take more time to construct the audience than if the piece were simply informative. It seems as though, in order to reach and persuade as many people as possible, the author might wish to figure out how s/he can reach the largest number of people possible - perhaps that would affect how the author sets up the article or how s/he tries to construct ethos or pathos. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about the Letter to the President, but I wrote about the Kinneavy article instead of Ong. That being said, do you really think that more empirical evidence could have been stated if the letter was written for the U.N.? The date of the letter is from 1998, and considering the fact that to this day very little information is known about the specifics of Saddam Hussein's regime, it is difficult to say whether or not the letter could have been more factual and less opinionated. As the authors point out, Iraq's refusal to participate in U.N. inspections for quite a number of years inhibits our ability to understand what the country was developing, and what their actual threat was to the world. So is it possible that if they appealed to the U.N. rather than the President they could have provided enough evidence of chemical and biological weapon production to persuade the U.N. into action?
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