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Persuasion Analysis by Professor Hugh Rank

Simple ways to analyze complex persuasion techniques

Overview -- Updated: May 13, 2008

Pattern recognition gives us some way to sort, some place to store, and some help to cope better with a persuasion blitz. This site emphasizes the most common pattern of commercial ads (The Pitch) and a less common, but very significant, pattern of political persuasion seen in the rhetoric of "cause groups" (The Pep Talk)

Both patterns, however, are smaller parts of an elegant, comprehensive taxonomy -- the Intensify/Downplay schema offering other common sense ways to organize, to classify and to analyze incoming information about advertising and political language.

OBSERVE, in persuasion, that all people intensify some elements, downplay others.

HOW we intensify (by means of repetition, association, composition) and how we downplay (by means of omission, diversion, confusion) are techniques common to all.

For example, under a broad category of Intensify / Composition / Structure, the most common structural pattern seen in ads is "The Pitch." One-page classroom reprints with a
1-2-3-4-5 "fingertip formula" (w/ 5 cartoons) are simple and easy. Online, there's more about variations, exceptions, and more about classical rhetoric, e.g. Aristotle's ethos.

WHAT we intensify and downplay, furthermore, depends on our role and behaviors in the persuasion transaction between benefit-seekers and benefit-promisers. Simple graphics can alert us to other predictable patterns. For example:

As benefit-seekers, a simple quadrant diagram can show how we all seek to keep the "good" (protection) and to get the "good" (acquisition); and, to avoid the "bad" (prevention) and to get rid of the "bad" (relief)-- emphasizing our own needs, wants, values.

As benefit-promisers, a different quadrant diagram can show how we all intensify our own "good" and downplay our own "bad"; furthermore, in aggression, we also intensify others' "bad" and downplay others' "good."

Two counter-propaganda axioms are noted.

Since 1973 (as original Chair of NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak), I've created simple teaching aids to analyze complex contemporary persuasion. My schema was meant to be non-directive, descriptive, useful for various goals. But it's so huge that many teachers (short on time and training) asked for help: where to start? It all fits together, but for most users, I'd prescribe my directive: start with the basic 1-2-3-4-5 pattern of the pitch we see in everyday ads .
-- Professor Hugh Rank

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Tools for Younger Students

Advertising is the easiest starting point to analyze any persuasion techniques. Most ads are relatively simple in structure, easily available, and in the coherent packages as they were created. Suitable for middle school and high school are two fully-developed online units about ads -- The Pitch and The ABCs of TV Ads:

The Pitch

5 extensive chapters showing the easy 1-2-3-4-5 "Fingertip Formula" useful to analyze the basic structural pattern of all ads

1: Hi
2. Trust Me
3. You Need
4. Hurry
5. Buy

The ABCs of TV Ads

26 related sub-sections, includes material in The Pitch, plus more about the wider context of ads.

Related 1-pg classroom passouts
Most are self-contained; all relate to online materials:

30-Second-Spot Quiz
How to Analyze Ads
Why Analyze Ads?
What's in it for me?
200 Questions About Advertising
Counter-Propaganda Axioms
Products (Blank Template)

Tools for Older Students
(College, Teachers, Adults)

Advertising is the easiest starting point to analyze any modern persuasion techniques. Most ads are relatively simple in structure, easily available, and in the coherent packages as they were created.

< First, check out The Pitch and the related 1-pg passouts (center list): most are useful by anyone.

A Companion to Composition

is designed to be a full semester online addition to college and AP rhetoric and composition courses.

Ten chapters show basic rhetorical principles (Purpose, Audience, Limits, Structure, etc.) with parallel split-screens linking how TV ads apply concepts any writer uses to compose well.

Ads are often the best compositions of our era! Analysis - the taking-apart process - is the counterpart of composition-- the putting-together process.

"Cause Group" Rhetoric: The Pep Talk
Rhetoric which calls for committed, collective action, commonly using a 4-part pattern, here called: "The Pep Talk" (Threat, Bonding, Cause, Response)

War Propaganda