{"id":66,"date":"2017-06-19T22:54:41","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T22:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/olemiss-writing100\/chapter\/tone-language-and-appeal\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T00:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T00:48:33","slug":"tone-language-and-appeal","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/olemiss-writing100\/chapter\/tone-language-and-appeal\/","title":{"raw":"Tone, Language, and Appeal","rendered":"Tone, Language, and Appeal"},"content":{"raw":"You can approach your audience\u2019s needs and build common ground using three basic rhetorical approaches: tone<\/strong>, language<\/strong>, and appeal<\/strong>.\r\n

Tone<\/h2>\r\nWhat\u2019s the difference between a formal tone and a conversational tone? What about the difference between writing that\u2019s conversational and writing that\u2019s very rigid? Of the three approaches we cover here, tone may be the most important one: if you choose the wrong tone, you may turn off your audience completely.\r\n\r\nTake a look at this example from a student\u2019s proposal to create an infographic for senior citizens:\r\n
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real student's writing<\/h3>\r\n
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Based on this senior citizen audience, simplicity and authenticity must be key characteristics of the infographic. Its message, presented mainly through visuals, must not only be clear and easy to understand, but it must also be genuine in nature. Caution must be taken to avoid seeming judgmental towards the audience members\u2019 digital skills and tendencies.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n<\/div>\r\nThis student wants to make sure the tone of her document builds good will with her audience. If your audience is made up of senior citizens, you would want to make sure that you aren\u2019t patronizing or belittling them about their technical expertise.\r\n\r\nCan you think of a situation where your tone didn\u2019t match the audience\u2019s expectations? As you write an essay, you have to consider the audience\u2019s potential reception of your tone. Even if the audience is hypothetical, the only way to ensure that you aren\u2019t \u201ctone deaf\u201d is to pay attention to your tone.\r\n

Language<\/h2>\r\nLanguage is closely related to tone. In fact, if you misjudge the appropriate language for your audience, your tone will suffer, too. If you are writing an article for a scientific journal, obviously you would want to make sure to use the technical language appropriate\u00a0to your subject.\r\n\r\nLanguage has a lot to do with discourse communities<\/strong>. Imagine that you work in a car assembly plant. You know your job and enough about the process of car assembly in general to talk to anybody else in the plant about their jobs, as well. You probably have a specialized vocabulary that describes your work process. Now, imagine that you walk into an airplane manufacturing plant. Would you be able to do the same thing? Sure, many of the processes are the same, and you might be able to talk to the workers about the things you have in common. But the vocabulary is different. Workers in the airplane factory talk about different things and have different common knowledge than you do. Each factory is a discourse community<\/strong>. When you write, you are participating in a discourse community, and you should use language that matches the expectations of the audience.\r\n\r\nCan you think of a situation where your language didn\u2019t match the audience\u2019s expectations? If you are an audiologist, for example, you would use different language to explain how a cochlear implant works to the parents of a deaf child than you would to discuss advances in cochlear implant technology with other audiologists.\r\n

Appeals<\/h2>\r\nYou have already learned about the rhetorical appeals: ethos<\/strong>, pathos<\/strong>, and logos<\/strong>. Match them to their definition in the practice box below:\r\n
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review your knowledge<\/h3>\r\n