Philosophic Ponderings on the Foundations of Persuasive Texts
There is an almost ubiquitous belief and an accompanying, well circulated narrative that persuasion is a vital mainstay of our existence; that persuasive texts are societally valued and that the failure to teach them would be prejudicing our children’s capacity to live effectively in the world around them. As educators, teachers and parents it is supportive of ourselves and our children to ask if this narrative is actually accurate or true.
Such a philosophical consideration regarding the teaching of persuasive and indeed, its ubiquity in society, follows. Thereafter, we will present a specifically focussed suite of articles on the various text types throughout history through to today.
Has Persuasion Become an Acceptable Euphemism for Imposition?
Many of us will have noticed the intensity of the audio-visual imposition that accompanies a large number of advertisements on both screens and radio. Persuasive texts, and in particular advertising and marketing, are currently the backbone and lifeblood of worldwide commerce and they impact all economics from the personal and domestic through to regions, states and countries, ultimately engulfing the entire globe.
This ubiquity then confers a sense of the normality of this type of text. But what if this form of ‘normality’ is contrived and is unhealthy, injurious and undermining of the innate decency that can be naturally present when we all interact, including when we transact in business?
What is the source of the belief that we need to persuade another, or many others? Have we considered fully that persuasion actually indicates that a singular, dominating entity is exerting its influence over the one, or the many, that submit to that dominance and to its circulated order of the day? The etymology of the word confirms this dynamic of imposition with crystal clarity (1)
The Etymology of ‘Persuasion’
The etymology of the verb ‘to persuade’ reveals that its origin aligns with the current definition that to persuade is to--
‘lead to the opinion or conclusion (that), make (one) believe or think, successfully urge the acceptance or practice of,’ 1510s, from French persuader (14c.), from Latin persuadere ‘to bring over by talking.’ (1) (bolding by the writer).
Persuasion as a noun similarly holds origin in the activity of urging and inducing another or others ‘to believe something by appeals to reason,’ or to ‘thoroughly urge.’ This is revealed by etymology as being ‘sweeter’ than persuasion by aggressive physical or military force. (1)
Both definitions imply a disharmony, or more so, a dissension, in the group, or one on one relationship dynamic, where both one or the other impose their viewpoint/s, yet only one gains in ascendancy and victory over the other, whether that dominance be emotional, intellectual or commercial.
This is akin to a socially sanctioned form of assault where the first incident of imposition inevitably sets off multiple downward spirals of combat, justification, defence, submission and ultimately, separation. Our relationships become transactional arrangements with the shifting-sand foundations of victory, acquiescence to the victor, withdrawal and a regrouping to fight again another day. There is significant and exclusive emphasis on winning for ostensible individual gain. In commerce, business and economics targets are set without reference to the profoundly heavy price paid in terms of human decency, transparency and intimacy. A consideration of the multiple factors of the situation delivers a more accurate balance sheet revealing that no one is enriched by these exchanges. They are the ultimate ‘lose, lose’ situation. To the victor, the spoils is euphemistically false because the victor themselves is spoiled equally alongside the one that submits, through the destruction of relationship and the setting of a playing field of antagonism for the future.
Ironically, the one/s that submit enable the victor in their victory.
The question is, do we, perhaps, engage in this, and allow it, because of a desirous belief that, on other occasions, we too will have the opportunity to drink from another victorious cup, (?) irrespective of the wholesale net losses that such actions entail.
The Colosseum of Advertising and Global Economics.
The glory of Rome may have passed many centuries ago but its corrupt legacy continues on in many modern arenas, including the arena of persuasive advertising.
The work of the marketing industry worldwide demonstrates the fact of manipulation, if not imposition, in advertising. Savvy marketing companies operate fully cognisant of the effects of product design and colour, music and jingles, the visual angular placement of their product in relation to the product users, the use of celebrities to endorse products, catchy slogans, repetition, prime time exposure, the use of demographic information and trends to target specific groups of people (aka the target market or brand demographic) and more. This multitude of factors all coalesce as a package, a representation of a specific energetic quality, that emerges as a product that carries that energy as its brand and its branded name. Before we can say ‘be aware’, we find ourselves identifying with the energy of the brands we buy e.g. I’m a ‘x brand’ of chocolate person but my husband is a ‘y brand’ man; I’m a Ford man but you’re a Holden type of guy. We are presented with an unending smorgasbord of brands to choose from, so much so that the almost unending variety gives the illusion of individual taste, preference and ultimately self-identification. Yet, unless, for example, the milk came directly hand milked from a cow (that is naturally brand free) we have been targeted, branded and persuaded to buy and to consume throughout the entire span of our lives, literally from the cradle to the grave.
The significance of this is that everything that has been purchased, bought and borrowed, everything that we live in, everything that we move in, everything that we wear, what we eat, all our goods and chattels, have all been advertised at some stage and have all had their targeted demographic. All our items and belongings were purchased because of some form of persuasion – an advertisement, a leaflet or a very convincing salesperson or friend.
Therefore, what is the quality of the many items with which we surround ourselves if:
(1) we’ve been targeted as a specific demographic?
(2) if the targeting is based upon a form of communication and a formalised transaction that is already corrupt in terms of its intent to secure sales via imposition or by ‘thoroughly urging’?
Are we allowing ourselves to be semi-consciously branded – over and over and over, countless times?
Unless we elect to discern the quality of these items, we are surrounding ourselves with, if not drowning in, an out-of-control ocean of imposition.
It is this undiscerned mass that we attune ourselves to and then call ‘normal’ based on its unchallenged ubiquity.
Ubiquity and the commonplace neither constitute, nor build, a healthy sense of what is truly normal.
From this perspective it becomes clear that we are allowing, even enabling, a false normal to invade our communication, our homes, our relationships, children and family, our commerce and our entire lives. This normality has also brutalised our physical senses so that we desensitise and are numbed to the effects of the infiltration. This can be observed most readily in the rise and rise of fast, convenient junk food as one example of many.
Justifiable Economics: Money Makes the World Go Around
In terms of the ruthless emphasis on people as a commodity for the securing of demographic targets, securing sales and a percentage of market share, and promoting the brand, modern marketing and advertising currently operate as out of control delinquents with no regard for the human effects of what they do.
As teachers when faced with erratic behaviour of this nature, we would always ask ‘what's going on here?’ and ‘where are the parents?’
So what is responsible for the parenting of these two and what enables it to renege on its parental responsibility?
Money makes the world go around is the chirpy throw-away line so many of us were raised on without necessarily allowing the awareness of the many unpalatable machinations that accompany this circulation.
‘Market share’ for companies all over the world is a subset of each country’s global economic profile of status, prestige and resource value and overall net worth – worth according to economics, that is. Our countries are divided, not exclusively by geography, but by their qualifying membership to first, second or third world status, an attribution that may occur regardless of a country’s resource value. Somewhere a lot of strings are being pulled by an anonymous, invisible puppeteer (or many of them) to bring about the uneasy alliances of ‘market share’, alongside the movement of currency throughout economic global society.
The one surety in economics is the Law of Supply and Demand.
But there's the rub. Who is making the demand that is calling for an unending supply of consumerism and classification or identification by agreed upon definitions of what constitutes material wealth?
That would be… all of us. By active participation, by passive enabling, by staying silent, we are the demand that calls for the consumerist variety of supply and the ‘persuasive’ communication mode that supports it.
Vox Populi*
This returns us to persuasive communication and its associated visual, written and spoken text types. Are these in similar vein to the vox populi of the mob of ancient Rome? Are we also a collective voice contaminated with the clamouring for a marginally more sophisticated demand for our modernised 21st century bread and games, a voice that bears the quality of technological sophistication, but has otherwise remained unchanged in its MO for millennia, a thousands of years old script with an ignoble pedigree dressed up in modern day bling?
In regard to the education of our children, we then subscribe to the belief that the contaminated voice of demand is entirely natural to our young and so should naturally be taught in schools as a societally valued text. As with ubiquity, naturalness is neither determined, nor conferred, by this type of very old, repetitive form of normality. In fact, it is ubiquity and the many layers of unquestioned normality that entice children into the arena where they expect to be given the latest form of dirt bike, the most up to date computer game and the most recently trending brand of clothing.
If we insist on the unquestioned and undiscerned teaching of persuasive texts, are we not, in effect, positioning, even forcing, our children into the global economic colosseum, where the illusion of multiple competing brands is used as the way of identifying what and who they are and what their adult life’s purpose will be? It is not a huge stretch from dirt bikes, computer games and clothing brands to aspiring to life goals of owning a certain brand of car or buying specific type of property or engaging in x sort of business. This is not to say that surrounding oneself with what material wealth can bring is to be disdained, criticised or judged, but simply to indicate the emptiness of a life lived exclusively in the pursuit of acquisition, especially when it has been founded on the force of undiscerned persuasion.
Life Outside the Colosseum
We as educators and parents have a momentous responsibility in what we present as being normal and acceptable to our children. Whilst it is a fact that persuasive texts are ubiquitous and dominate so much of our lives, we equally have the daily opportunity to share with our young that there are other ways to live and conduct ourselves within this ocean of imposition referred to here as an economically driven, consumerist colosseum. If we abrogate this responsibility, we are, in effect, inducting our children into a life of expression substantially based on persuasion and its ignoble divisive techniques of artifice.
Discernment is a great starting point and we educators have insightful, critical literacy skills that can be deployed across the board with persuasive texts.
Deconstructing these texts and exposing their levels of artifice brings the space for us to nurture our children into their true, and truly ‘natural’, expression.
From an historical perspective, we can equally present the original, often timeless, forms of communication that later became the bastardised persuasive texts of today.
In this suite of articles, we will commence with the historically oldest type of persuasion, that of debate and oratory, and then follow the course of the unfolding of this genre, through to the ubiquitous forms of advertising that are circulating throughout society today.
This is a simple beginning, but one that is very much called for in our current times. We invite you to join us in considering for yourself the many artifices, aspects and ramifications of this text type throughout society and its effects on all of us.
(1) Persuasion: Search online etymology dictionary (no date) Etymology. Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=persuasion&ref=searchbar_searchhint (Accessed: February 1, 2023).
*Vox populi: lit- voice of the people; often refers to majority belief.