Audience: Whom Are You Trying to Convince?
In his work entitled, quite simply, Rhetoric, Aristotle explains that all speeches involve the making of a judgment, and he indicates the importance of the listener in determining the purpose of a speech, to win a favorable judgment on an issue in court or politics, or for the speaker to be deemed eloquent and appropriately moving during a ceremonial occasion. 3 As educators we speak of this with students as knowing your audience; just as rhetorical details and tactics vary based on the makeup of the audience, so here will we urge our students to consider the audience in pursuing their work and focus, and so will we in turn consider those elements in determining our teaching strategies and creating our rubrics.
Every person is unique, and of course different things convince different people. So it is important to consider multiple areas and methods of persuasion to achieve the greatest, likeliest persuasive successes. Although in any group the permutations of viewpoint, background, and feelings are innumerable, in the world language classroom, a student will engage with and so need to convince the following general categories of audiences of his or her fluency: Classmates (as communicative partners), Classmates (as listeners or eavesdroppers), Teacher/s, and perhaps most importantly, Self.
Though these categories appear tidy and clear, the boundaries actually blur a bit. While yes, I do break down the elements of persuasion by target audience group, persuasive success will not be achieved through the use of any one set of elements exclusively; that being said, we will use these as solid categorical starting points from which to proceed. We will consider each audience to determine what aspects of language and communication will be most effective at convincing its members of a student's fluency. As students assemble all the most personally relevant elements into individual linguistic pinwheels, figuratively and then literally in Activity I, they arm themselves with a tool that only needs the breath of each voice to start spinning and shining compelling evidence of fluency.
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