Grouping by the Genre to Persuade:

Texts A, B, C and E all share either a primary or secondary purpose to persuade. Strong inclusions, A and B, are advertisements belonging to an organisation promoting specific issues; A which is smoking and B badger culling. Text E is also a strong inclusion: a blurb to a fiction book, its purpose being to persuade the audience to buy said book. All the texts use features which directly address the audience. The use of the second person pronoun in text E, “Enter-if you can bear it-the…” adds a personal touch to the blurb of the book inviting you in, which contrasts with the previous description of the book which is simply to inform . The use of a mitigated imperative here, which is softened with the embedded clause: “…if you can bear it...” makes it almost a challenge for the reader to ‘enter’ the book. This persuades well because instead of the reader feeling forced to read the book, they may feel it is their ‘choice’ and that they haven’t been persuaded at all, which possibly increases the likelihood of people buying this book. The second person pronoun in text A, “Every time you smoke your blood gets...” works effectively with the use of graphology to create a bigger impact, of perhaps horror or shock, as it is implying that ‘your’ blood will get ‘thick and dirty’ just like the disturbing image they have used. This suggests that their primary audience is people who already smoke as well as the secondary audience of putting people off who have not yet tried smoking. Text B uses the imperative: “Don’t shoot!” as the main feature of the advertisement, this possibly is used to play with the readers emotions, implying the badger is asking you not to shoot making you feel responsible and guilty especially as it is an exclamatory sentence, which could lead you to make links with similar situations, for example, innocent civilians in war situations. The entire leaflet works effectively with this first bold message. The lexical field of war has been used, for example, words such as “kill zones”, “survive” and “shoot”, end up making the badgers on the right/innocent side in this ‘war against badgers’. The bold orthography in this sentence attracts the eye to the word “shoot”. This could give the reader a sense of power, implying that they have this ‘metaphorical gun’ where they have the choice to do right or wrong. The audience for this leaflet is everyday people; it would be posted through doors where the household has no subscription, for example, to the RSPCA, meaning the bold orthography also works as a means of making sure that they pick up this leaflet as opposed to throwing it away. Weak inclusion C has a secondary purpose to persuade. It is packaging for ‘lush’ where it is promoting recycling. Its primary purpose being to inform, giving facts about the dangers of littering, for example, “Plastic waste kills up to 1000,000 sea mammals and countless fish every year…”. However, the fact that the packaging is based entirely around spreading an environmentally friendly message, including graphology such as well-known logos like the recycling symbol, is a means of persuading the audience to buy the product. Lush is well known for being environmentally friendly and many people would shop there being well aware of this fact. This means that the information about plastic waste would actually persuade the audience to buy the product.