Overview of The Style of Argument in Writing

The Style of My Argument

In my persuasive letter, a critical and didactic voice from my perspective as a student was created by using argumentative diction to persuade a school official to implement a district-wide open campus policy.

My stylistic choices, strong diction for argument and a typical argumentative/persuasive structure (from the SpringBoard template) are the strongest and help the most to show my purpose and to create my voice. When talking about how an open-campus policy effects the lives’ of students at school, I used words like impractical, restricting and hindering. This type of diction applies to pathos and helps influence the reader to feel stronger about how a closed-campus is negatively affecting students. I also used diction to help give a perspective from the students and show that they cared about this issue and had a desire for there to be change. I did so with use of words like necessity, desire and the phrase “incentive to improve their grades and attendance.” Not only do words like these strengthen my argument by way of pathos, but they also help create a didactic tone. They help create a perspective that is critical of the school’s policy. Another element used well in this piece was the first-person, student perspective created from use of the pronoun I and verbs (not strong enough ones unfortunately) that show I am a student, I am affected by these policies, and I see how it affects other students. These verbs are used in phrases like “I think” or “I see.” Establishing myself “as a student in high school” earlier in my letter appeals to ethos and allows these phrases to have credibility. Some other rhetorical devices I used well to support my argument were qualifiers and conditionals. Qualifiers like often (unnecessary) made my argument more credible and not nonsense. Using the conditional “doing so” in my call-action makes it easier for the reader to understand what I am asking for and what my purpose is. Although, I would have rather used a stronger conditional like “If we create a conditional open campus policy then students will have a better incentive to improve their grades.”

However strong my argument was made by good use of diction and rhetorical devices, the argument and voice in my persuasive letter was severely hindered by some inconsistencies in my rhetorical triangle, syntax errors (including diction) and lack of commentary. What I see as being the main problem in my essay is my rhetorical triangle, specifically the audience. My letter is addressed to “Chris Nation,” a Washington State school board official when I am discussing a District 81 issue. In the body of my letter I refer often to schools specific to District 81 and their policies. Even my opening sentence is “it is time we create a district wide open-campus policy.” A state official is really the incorrect audience for this topic; I should have made the audience the District 81 superintendent. The other major hindrance is my syntax of too many long sentences or sentences of the same length and not enough evidence sentences. In my first and second paragraph, 90% of the sentences are 12-14 words. Using too many similar sentences with the same style make my writing boring and less persuasive. It overstresses the critical voice I was trying to make. I also used some awkward diction like the word cons, which could have been replaced with the word issues. Lack of evidence harms my appeal to logos and makes my purpose for writing not as strong as it needs to be.

There are a few rhetorical and literary devices I wish I could have incorporated into my letter to make the argument stronger by better stressing the purpose in my voice. Besides fixing more of the syntax errors and poor wording, what I need to add to make my argument stronger would be literary devices like juxtaposition, similes and hyperbole. In my second to last paragraph which contains my call to action, I think using juxtaposition with something like “students who attend open-campus schools experience this, while students with closed-campus experience this,” instead of just saying “doing so(open campus) gives incentive for students to improve.” Changing this would be more effective in stating the purpose for my call to action. In my body paragraphs, I would have used hyperbolical statements like “paying for school lunch is corrupt.” But I would have to be careful because hyperbole can sometimes sound like inaccurate statements in need of a qualifier. If I had a better use of literary and rhetorical devices I could have created a much more passionate voice that was critical of the school’s policy.