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Module 7

Informative, Persuasive and Argumentative Communication

Learning Outcomes

1. Create a public service announcement regarding environmental disaster

preparedness employing the concepts of informative, persuasive, and
argumentative communication.
2. Create and present clear, coherent, and effective communication materials.
3. Adopt awareness of audience and context in presenting ideas.

Overview

Communication is made for numerous purposes. The way messages are crafted
depends highly on the intention of the sender. It also emphasized as it serves its purpose to
inform, evoke, entertain, argue and persuade.

Informative Communication involves giving than asking. As an informative

communicator, you want your receivers to pay attention and understand, but not to change
their behaviour. By sharing information, ignorance is reduced, or better yet, eliminated. The
informative value of a message is measured by how novel and relevant the information is or
the kind of understanding it provides the receiver.

Osborn (2009) purports that informative communication arises out of three deep
impulses:

a. We seek to expand our awareness to the world around us.

b. We seek to become more competent.
c. We have an abiding curiosity about how things work and how they are made.

When preparing for an informative exchange, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is my topic noteworthy to be considered informative?

2. What do my recipients already know about my topic?
3. What more do they have to know?
4. Am I knowledgeable enough of my topic to help my receivers understand it?

Persuasive Communication is an art of gaining fair and favourable considerations for

our point of view. It

a. Provides a choice among options.

b. Advocates something through a speaker.
c. Uses supporting material to justify advice.
d. Turns the audience into agents of change
e. Asks for strong audience commitment.
f. Gives importance to the speaker’s credibility
g. Appeals to feelings
h. Has higher ethical obligation.

Argumentative Communication relies heavily on sound proofing and reasoning. The

nature of proof has been studied since the Golden Age of Greece and has been improved

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through time. According to Aristotle, logos, ethos and pathos are the three primary forms of
proof. In our time, whoever, many scholars have confirmed the presence of a fourth
dimension of proof, mythos, which suggests that we respond to appeals to the traditions and
values of our culture and to the legends and folktales that embody them.

Lucas (2007) claims that to avoid defective argumentation, the following must be
avoided:

1. Defective evidence
 Misuse of facts
 Statistical fallacies
 Defective testimony
 Inappropriate evidence
2. Defective pattern of reasoning
 Evidential fallacies
a. Slippery slope
b. Confused facts with opinion
c. Red herring
d. Myth of the mean
 Flawed proofs
 Defective arguments

CHECK and DO

CHECK (Questions for Discussion)

1. What is the difference between an informative communication and a

persuasive communication? Which do you think is more challenging in terms
of preparation and delivery?
2. What ethical considerations must one bear in mind when informing,
persuading or arguing?

Do Activities (To Do)

1. Examine magazine advertisements and newspaper articles to find

“infomercials”. What alerts you to persuasive intent? In what respects do such
communications possess the characteristics of persuasion and information?
2. Through a video or visual aid create a public service announcements
regarding environmental disaster preparedness. Employ the concepts learned
about information, argumentative, and persuasive communication.

PC_1st_Sem_ _NQA