Initial Perspectives Persuasion
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
When I initially think of persuasive communication, I think of myself sitting down to structure an argumentative essay or a debate. It sounds complex to me, but really when we're just beginning to communicate as small children, we learn how to persuade. It might not be a highly complex strategy, but kids methodically plan ways to get what they want from their parents and teachers all the time. Is this necessarily taught outright? No, generally it's learned by interacting with the people around them and by trial and error, figuring out what methods are successful. This is very basic, and while this class addresses methods to refine and improve our systems of persuasive communication, the concept is still the same: get people to change their minds and follow your lead.
To be specific, exactly how is communication an interactional process? A myriad of components can be attributed, for starters the clear communication of ideas to the person/party you are trying to persuade. I can think of many previous experiences where the point I was trying to make got lost while I was trying to communicate it to another person. I'm in math class trying to explain what part of a formula I don't understand to a TA from Korea who's first language isn't English...