3.12: Tone, Language, and Appeal
- Explore strategies for connecting with an audience through effective tone, language, and rhetorical appeals
You can approach your audience’s needs and build common ground using three basic rhetorical approaches: tone , language , and appeal .
Tone
What’s the difference between a formal tone and a conversational tone? What about the difference between writing that’s conversational and writing that’s very rigid? Of the three approaches we cover here, tone may be the most important one: if you choose the wrong tone, you may turn off your audience completely.
Take a look at this example from a student’s proposal to create an infographic for senior citizens:
This student wants to make sure the tone of her document builds good will with her audience. If your audience is made up of senior citizens, you would want to make sure that you aren’t patronizing or belittling them about their technical expertise.
Can you think of a situation where your tone didn’t match the audience’s expectations? As you write an essay, you have to consider the audience’s potential reception of your tone. Even if the audience is hypothetical, the only way to ensure that you aren’t “tone deaf” is to pay attention to your tone.
Tone reveals the attitude of the writer, which can range from friendly to angry to cold to intimate.
Notice the different tones in the two passages below:
Boss 1:
It has come to my attention that computers are not being turned off at the end of the workday. This is a possible security breach, as well as a waste of electricity, and failure to shut down electronic equipment will not be tolerated. Please ensure that your computers are off before you leave each night or there will be consequences for individuals who do not comply.
Boss 2:
Hello, everyone! I know that here at Plants, Inc., we’re all committed to a green work environment. So I’m asking for your help with respect to computers. We’ve seen a number of computers inadvertently left on in the evenings. I want to ask for your cooperation in turning off your computer before you leave, which helps conserve electricity. Thanks for your help!
Academic Language
When writing a research paper and other academic writing (what is called academic discourse) you’ll want to use what is called the academic voice, which is meant to sound objective, authoritative, and reasonable. While a research paper will be based on your opinion on a topic, it will be an opinion based on evidence (from your research) and one that has been argued in a rational manner, using standard, formal language, in your paper.
You use academic language because your opinion is based on thinking; in your writing assignments, you’re revealing your thought process to your reader. Because you’ll be appealing to reason, you want to use the language of one intellectual talking to another intellectual.
1. Be clear.
Instead of: The utilization of teams as a way of optimizing our capacity to meet and prioritize our goals will impact the productivity of the company.
Write: Teams will execute the goals and enhance the company’s output.
2. When using the academic voice you won’t usually use first personal pronouns.
Instead of: I think anyone who becomes a parent should have to take a parenting class.
Write: Parenting classes should be mandatory for any biological or adoptive parents.
3. Avoid using second-person pronouns.
Instead of: When you read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” you will realize that King was writing to people besides the ministers who criticized him.
Write: Upon reading “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” readers will note that King was addressing a wider audience than the clergy who condemned his actions.
4. Avoid contractions in more formal writing.
Instead of: It shouldn’t be difficult to record what we feel, but many of us just can’t get our feelings down on paper.
Write: It should not be difficult to record feelings, but many people are unable to do so.
5. Avoid informal language
Instead of: It’s obvious that she’s a feminist because she makes a big deal about women who were into the suffrage movement.
Write: Because of her focus on the suffragists, one can assume she is a feminist.
6. Abbreviations for common terms should not be used in academic writing
Instead of: Smith was declared the official winner at the P.O. last Mon. on Jan. 6th.
Write: Smith was declared the official winner at the post office last Monday, on January 6.
7. Use gender-inclusive language and gender-neutral pronouns, when appropriate. So instead of “he or she” and “his or her,” use “they, them, or their.”
Instead of : Every student should turn his or her paper into the office before noon.
Write : Students should turn in their papers to the office before noon.
Although using the singular form of “they” was previously frowned upon in academic writing, it is now acceptable. For example, male pronouns were often used to refer to an unknown someone (“to each his own”), or just female pronouns (“to each her own”), but those show gender bias. Instead, “to each their own” is appropriate.
Instead of : “That driver needs to stay in his lane. He’s being so aggressive!”
Write : “That driver needs to stay in their lane. They’re being so aggressive!”
Language
Language is closely related to tone. In fact, if you misjudge the appropriate language for your audience, your tone will suffer, too. If you are writing an article for a scientific journal, obviously you would want to make sure to use the technical language appropriate to your subject. Of course, if you write a text message to a friend, your language should be informal, non-technical, and conversational!
The differences in the kind of language that we use and that is appropriate and correct depends on our understanding of the different rhetorical contexts. Language use depends on discourse communities (the discourse community of a scientific journal versus the discourse community of text messages among friends). Imagine that you work in a car assembly plant. You know your job and enough about the process of car assembly in general to talk to anybody else in the plant about their jobs, as well. You probably have a specialized vocabulary that describes your work process. Now, imagine that you walk into an airplane manufacturing plant. Would you be able to do the same thing? Sure, many of the processes are the same, and you might be able to talk to the workers about the things you have in common. But the vocabulary is different. Workers in the airplane factory talk about different things and have different common knowledge than you do. Each factory is a discourse community . When you write, you are participating in a discourse community, and you should use language that matches the expectations of the audience.
Rhetorical Appeals
Writers use tone and language to appeal and connect with an audience. To be persuasive, they also use rhetorical appeals. We talked earlier about using logos, pathos, and ethos to determine what kind of evidence might be most effective. Logos is about appealing to your audience’s logical side; pathos is about appealing to their emotions; ethos is about using credibility or character to underscore the appeal to your audience.
Match each rhetorical appeal to its definition in the practice box below:
What do these appeals have to do with finding common ground with an audience? Well, the way you balance ethos, pathos, and logos can vary depending on who your audience is. Think about the scenario below:
An audience of scientists is primarily interested in your credibility (ethos) and your facts (logos). They want to know more about your methods, how your data was collected, and the accuracy of your study. When you are presenting to this group, you should minimize appeals to emotion, as they could turn off your audience.
An audience of kindergarteners is primarily interested in big, fluffy polar bears. Thus, you would want to emphasize the appeal to emotion (pathos). Your ethos, or credibility, is important, but in a different way than it is with the scientists. You must express yourself in a way that makes the children feel comfortable with you and makes them trust what you say. Facts are important in every situation, but the kindergarteners aren’t going to scrutinize your methods.
An audience of climate change denialist politicians would generally be very hostile to what you have to say. Playing up your credibility (ethos) may not be very helpful because they already reject the field in which your credibility is rooted. You have to rely heavily on facts (logos) with this audience and demonstrate that your facts are impossible to deny. You also have to rely on emotion (pathos) but in a different way than you do with the kindergarteners. This hostile audience is already reacting to you with emotion, so it’s important for you to receive that emotional energy and make the best of it.
ethos : appealing to an audience through credibility or character
logos : appealing to an audience through logic
pathos : appealing to emotions
tone : tone is conveyed through word choice and style; in academic writing, we typically use formal language choices and a serious style to give authority and credibility to our writing; a more informal, conversation tone (and choice of words and style) would be appropriate in interactions with friends, for example
Contributors and Attributions
- Tone, Language, and Appeal. Provided by : University of Mississippi. Project : PLATO Project. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
- Academic Voice. Provided by : Excelsior College Online Writing Lab. Located at : https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/finding-your-voice/finding-your-voice-tips-on-academic-voice/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
- Pronoun antecedents. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution