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Running Head: The Art of Persuading

The Art of Persuading

Ahmed Hassan
Antioch University

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

The Art of Persuading

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing
(Franklin). This quarter we have been learning the importance of writing in
our society and how we as students can benefit from learning different
writing skills. People often think the more words they include in the writing
the more persuasive it becomes. This is a misconception because
professional writers know what they are writing, whom they are writing for,
and what type of style to use based on the situation. Students often write in
four different ways, which are descriptive, argumentative, expository, and
narrative. We tend not to think about the deeper aspect of writing, which are
context, genre, stance and conventions etc. For this reason I decided to
research how different organization use effective writing to get their
message heard. I need to understand what type of genre B&G Club use in
their writing in order to reach the community are they persuasive or more
narrative. According to the course reading genre have the power to help or
hurt human interaction, to ease communication or to deceive, to enable
someone to speak or to discourage some from saying something different
(NG, 2010, p.252) The organization I choose to research about was the Boys
and Girls Club. The Boys and Girls Club (B&G) is a non-profit organization
that provides after school programs for young people all over the nation.
They offer programs and services that promote the development of boys and
girls by installing a sense of competence, usefulness, and belonging (bgca,

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

2014). The B&G Club serves annually 4 million kids in over 4,000 facilities
throughout the country. Locally, they are located in both Santa Barbara and
Goleta. The organization artifacts are all writing in persuasive and according
to the course reading in many situations, writers want not only to convince
audiences but to move them to action (EIAA, 2004, P.9). The B&G Club use
ethos, pathos, and logos in their writing in order to persuade readers to
donate money and make parents join their kids.
The B&G Club is an organization that depends on donations and
volunteers in order to give the best help as possible to the members. The
members are kids from the ages 6 to 18. They value the importance of
writing because they have to reach into peoples hearts and convince them
to both donate and volunteer. That is why they hire professional writers to
market their writing effective. Here is an example of the B&G Club in Portland
hiring ad: B&G Club in Portland is seeking a Grant Writer who will be
responsible

for

developing

writing

grant

proposals

and

persuasive

communication of BGCP mission, programs and impact to potential funder

(bgcp, 2015). In order to have good persuasive skills the writer must master
the art of persuading, which are the three appeals. The appeals originate
from ancient Greek. The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle divided the
means of persuasion into three different categories, which are ethos, pathos,
and logos. Ethos stands for credibility, and is used to convince readers that
the writing is crediblepathos stands for emotion, and is used to appeal to
the readers emotionslogos stand for logic, and is used to convince the

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

reader by reasoning (Durham, 1998). After visiting the B&G Club I managed
to obtain three writing artifacts to analyze. Also, the website had useful
information about the organizations locations, mission, volunteer and
donations. Two of the three writing artifacts received were pamphlet made
for donation and membership. The donation pamphlet was called I Will
Become Something Great and the membership pamphlet was called Great
Futures Start Here The third artifact was a magazine called Connection
and this magazine is used all over the country to share stories with the
community and within the organization. After emailing both the B&G Club in
Santa Barbara and in Goleta I managed to get an interview with Ashlyn
Strahle who is the club director for the B&G Club in Goleta. All of the artifacts
collected including the interview will work as evidence to support my claim
that B&G Club use ethos, pathos, and logos to pursue their readers take
action.
The appeal pathos is connected to all of the writing artifacts collected
from B&G Club because the whole organization is driven by emotions. The
core purpose of the organization is to help young people from different
cultures, race, and gender become successful citizens. That is why pathos is
used in their writing. The pamphlet I Will Become Something Great is a
three-page pamphlet that is filled with lots of emotions. The purpose of the
entire pamphlet was to create awareness about homeless kids and receiving
donations. Pathos appears in their pamphlet through the use of visual images
and a word choice that connects with the audience. On the first page there is

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

a picture of two young girls holding each other and smiling. The picture is
placed on the first page to catch the readers attention by showing these two
young vulnerable girls. Automatically, the reader might feel guilt and
decide to continue reading. After seeing the picture of the two young girls
holding each other. The readers is presented with and facts that are sad
because they involve kids being homeless. When the reader is on the last
page he/she is presented with call of action. This call of action is called
What It Takes To Become Something Great and in order to become
something great one must donate funds to help the kids. The highest
donation is 8 thousand dollars and according to the pamphlet this amount
will provide personal supplies for more than hundred young people at
Noahs Anchorage for year and the lowest donation is hundred dollars,
which would supply a backpack and sleeping bag to homeless youth
(IWBSG, 2014). Noahs Anchorage is youth crisis shelter that is being
supported by the B&G Club. The pamphlet writing is effective because its
written I intelligent way that include both pathos and ethos, but ethos is the
key factor in the writing because it makes the reader feel emotions that
makes them donate money to support these kids in need. The writer used
words filled with emotions such as we, us, vulnerable, difficulties and
helping. These words connect with our emotions because the readers feel
that they are connected with the problem and solution. Most humans love to
help those in need, but in order to help they some type of emotional
connection.

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

In addition, the appeal ethos is crucial for B&G Club writing because it
projects to the reader an impression that the organization is trustworthy.
They use facts and statistics to strengthen their mission. The B&G Club
website has a strong use of ethosit states how many cities, states, and
countriesthey are located in. This helps the organization by proving to the
reader that they are established and legit. Even though, the pamphlet I Will
Become Something Great was a written mostly with the appeal pathos.
Ethos was also included through the use of facts such as 21 percent of
Latino youth do not graduate from high school (IWBSG, 2015) to reinforce
the emotions. The point of having ethos is to convince the reader that there
is a problems and this problems need to be addressed. By doing this, the
organization seems noble for the readers because they are doing something
positive for the community. Again, ethos is used in the form of statistics,
facts and stories the magazine called Connections. In page 12 the
organization assets facts such as the unemployment rates among U.S teens
ages 16 to 19 stood at 19 percent and 85 to 90 percent of youth
unemployment is due to the lack of action of people in responsibility
(Connections, 2015). The magazine works as an insight of the organization
mission and progress. It helps the reader trust the organization by
connecting stories, facts, and implications of credible information
Furthermore, the use of logos is the key for the organization writing.
Logos is reasoning and an effective use of reasoning makes it easier for the
reader to understand, think and take action. The pamphlet Great Futures

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

Starts Here is created to attract members. This pamphlet targets the

parents because they are those who are in position to join make their kids
members of B&G Club. The B&G Club uses cause and effect technique to
give the parents better understanding of their programs. In the pamphlet
Great Future Start Here they have programs such as Character and
Leadership Development, Education and Career Development, Health and
Life Skills, Sports and Recreations and Arts (GFSH, 2015). These programs
are written in the form of cause and effect because it gives the parents
reason why their children should be members. The name of the pamphlet is
pathos, but the programs and the purpose is logos because it tells the parent
that the members will have a great future by attending these programs.
The B&G Club support these claim by stating these programs empowers the
youth to support and influence their community and sustain meaningful
relationships with others (GFSH). Also, they continue stating that by
attending these programs, the youth will have a positive self-image,
participate in the democratic process and respect their own cultural
identities (GFSH). The usage of logos in B&G Club writing support the claim
that they are trying to reason with the parents in order to get members.
Logos could be used in many ways to describe the supported argument and
build support indirectly by stating their programs and the outcomewhiles
letting the reader judges by themselves. Logos is used to convince an
audience of a certain point and make it easier for the parents to understand.

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

If logos are used correctly the writing will be seen as strong, clear,
reasonable and valid for the parents.
Lastly, the interview with the club director Ashlyn Strahle had specific
questions related to writing and we managed to discuss questions such as
how the organization uses writing to reach their audiencehow she uses
writing to reach her employeeshow important writing is for entire
organization. During the interview I asked questions such as; what are some
rhetorical strategies that the Boys and Girls Club use in order to reach the
audience, and are the appeals one of those strategies? Are the artifacts
aimed towards certain demographic of readers or is it aimed towards
everybody that wants to read it? Ashlyn stated that the appeals are
definitely used in their writing because they have people that are well
educated when it comes to writing, who know the use of the appeals
(Ashlyn). She also stated that pathos is one of their strongest appeals
because the B&G Club writing needs to spark emotions from the reader
(Ashlyn) Furthermore, Ashlyn stated That the organization writes in an
expressive style, with a lot of quotes and visual in order to get their message
across (Ashlyn). All of the answers given by Ashlyn were helpful because it
helped strengthen the claim that the B&G Club had strong use of ethos,
pathos, and logos in their writing in order to persuade their readers.
To conclude, the art of persuading through writing is essential in our
society and we as student can benefit from learning how write using the

Running Head: The Art of Persuading

appeals. The B&G Club used the appeals in all of their writing because its
the best way to connect with their readers both emotionally and logical. The
combination of these appeals were found in all of the writing sometimes one
more than the other, but all them could be found. Its important for the
organization to use these appeals because it makes their writing stronger
and professional. The fundamental appeal of the organization writing is
pathos because the goal is to help youth be successful in the community and
therefore spark emotions from the reader, but ethos could be found in almost
every artifact to back up the pathos with facts and statistics showing that the
information given is credible. The organization use of ethos was to build the
character of credibility and trustworthiness. The interview with Ashlyn
Strahle was really crucial for the research because it gave an insight of how
the organization uses writing by direct interaction with the organization. The
learning experience from this research was really amazing, and I know now
how to do research based on real world artifacts and interview. Seeing how
the appeals are effectively used in order to pursued readers made me
understand that there is more to writing and it could always be developed for
the better.

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Running Head: The Art of Persuading

References
Dirk, Kerry (2010) Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, a peer-reviewed
open textbook series for the writing classroom, and is published through Parlor Press.
Lunsford, A., & Ruszkiewicz, J. (2007). Finding Evidence. In Everything's an argument:
With readings (4th ed., p. 9). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Boys and Girls Club, 2014-15 National Youth of the Year! (n.d.). Retrieved March 13,
2015, from http://www.bgca.org/whoweare/Pages/WhoWeAre.aspx
Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland Metropolitan Area | Homepage. (n.d.). Retrieved March
13, 2015, from http://www.bgcportland.org/
Artifacts
Pamphlet: Great future start here, Boys and Girls Club, 2015
Pamphlet: I will become something great, Boys and Girls Club, 2015
Magazine: Connections, Boys and Girls Club, 2015