Persuasive techniques and rhetoric (QCE English Unit 1)
“Identify and analyse persuasive techniques (ethos, pathos, logos) and rhetorical strategies (repetition, parallelism, rhetorical question, anecdote, statistics) in QCE Year 11 English non-literary texts”
Persuasion rests on Aristotle's three appeals: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic), layered with rhetorical devices like anaphora, tricolon, antithesis, rhetorical questions and statistics. Always name the device in a quotation, then explain how it positions the audience.
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What this dot point is asking
QCAA wants Year 11 students to identify and analyse persuasive techniques and rhetorical strategies in non-literary texts (speeches, opinion pieces, advertisements).
The Aristotelian appeals
Aristotle's "Rhetoric" (c. 350 BCE) identified three appeals at the heart of persuasion. Still useful for analysis.
- Ethos (credibility)
- Speaker's authority, expertise, character. "As a doctor of years..." "I have known this family since..."
- Pathos (emotion)
- Audience's feelings. Vivid imagery, anecdote, emotive vocabulary, urgency.
- Logos (logic)
- Reasoned argument. Evidence, statistics, deductive reasoning, examples.
Strong persuasive texts combine all three.
Rhetorical strategies
- Repetition
- Same word or phrase repeated for emphasis.
- Anaphora
- Repetition at the start of consecutive clauses. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields..." (Churchill).
- Epistrophe
- Repetition at the end. "...of the people, by the people, for the people" (Lincoln).
- Parallelism
- Parallel grammatical structures across multiple clauses.
- Tricolon
- Three-part lists. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
- Antithesis
- Paired opposites. "Not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" (JFK).
- Rhetorical question
- Question that expects no answer; positions the audience to supply the implied answer.
- Anecdote
- Short illustrative story. Personalises the abstract argument.
- Statistics
- Numerical evidence. Effective when paired with anecdote and ethos.
- Allusion
- Reference to shared cultural texts (Bible, Shakespeare, national history).
- Hyperbole and understatement
- Exaggeration and its opposite.
- Direct address
- Speaking directly to the audience using "you".
- Inclusive pronouns
- "We", "us", "ours" creates shared identity between speaker and audience.
Modality and assertiveness
Persuasive writers calibrate modality:
- High modality ("must", "will", "absolutely") for moral imperatives.
- Low modality ("might", "could") for tentative possibilities the audience completes.
Visual and multimodal persuasion
In multimodal texts (advertisements, films, posters):
- Composition (rule of thirds, gaze direction).
- Colour symbolism.
- Typography (serif for tradition, sans-serif for modernity).
- Music and sound effects.
- Editing rhythm.
How to analyse persuasive texts
Standard three-step:
- Identify the technique in a specific quotation.
- Name it using rhetorical terminology.
- Account for effect: how it positions the audience, what response it invites, why it is effective in this context.
The appeals work together, not separately
Although it is convenient to name ethos, pathos and logos in turn, persuasion in practice braids them, and the strongest analysis reads the braid. A statistic (logos) gains its force from the authority of the speaker who cites it (ethos); an anecdote (pathos) carries an implicit argument (logos) about what the single case proves. When you can show one device doing the work of two appeals at once, a speaker's professional experience functioning simultaneously as credibility and as the ground for an emotional claim, you are reading persuasion as the integrated craft it is rather than sorting devices into bins. The marker rewards this because it demonstrates that you understand persuasion as an effect produced on an audience, not as a checklist of features present in a text.
Reading rhetoric in context
A device is not persuasive in the abstract; it is persuasive for a particular audience in a particular situation. The same rhetorical question that galvanises a sympathetic crowd may alienate a hostile one; the high modality that reads as conviction to allies reads as arrogance to opponents. Strong analysis therefore situates the technique: it asks who the audience is, what they already believe, and why this device works on them here. This contextual reading is what connects persuasive analysis to the unit's central concern with perspective and positioning, and it is what lifts a response from naming what a text does to explaining why the choice suits its rhetorical occasion.
Analyse a persuasive extract through appeals and devices
Frame the extract with the appeals
Read the whole extract for its dominant appeals before zooming in. In a speech that opens "For thirty years I have worked in classrooms like yours", note that it leads with ethos (experience) and moves toward pathos (hardship) and a final demand.
Identify and name the devices carrying each appeal
Quote and name precisely. The opening establishes ethos through extended professional authority. The tricolon "children who could not read, children who would not eat, and children whose parents could not afford uniforms", reinforced by the anaphora "children who", carries pathos through intensifying images.
Account for how each positions the audience
State the effect on the listener. The ethos invites deference to expertise; the anaphoric tricolon concentrates emotional weight and makes the suffering cumulative; the closing rhetorical question, "what kind of country watches this and does nothing?", forces the audience to position themselves morally without being handed an answer.
Argue the cumulative effect
Synthesise: credibility, then escalating emotion, then a question that converts feeling into obligation, together position the audience as moral citizens who must act. The sequence, not the isolated devices, is the persuasion.
Two errors dominate persuasive analysis. The first is listing techniques without effect: "identify and explain" tasks always require what the device does to the audience, not just its name. The second is mislabelling, which undermines credibility instantly: anaphora is repetition at the start of clauses while epistrophe is at the end; a tricolon needs three parts while a pair is antithesis or parallelism. A third trap, in multimodal persuasion, is forgetting visual modality, so an advertisement analysis must cite visual evidence (composition, gaze, colour) as well as verbal. The fix throughout is precise naming followed immediately by a grounded account of effect.
In one sentence
Persuasive texts use Aristotle's three appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) together with rhetorical strategies (repetition, anaphora, parallelism, tricolon, antithesis, rhetorical question, anecdote, statistics) to construct authority, urgency and reasoning; effective analysis identifies the technique in a specific quotation, names it correctly, and accounts for its effect on the audience.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of QCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice15 marksIA1-style analytical: Analyse how persuasive techniques and rhetorical strategies position the audience in a short speech extract. Support your interpretation with quoted evidence.Show worked answer →
QCAA marks the analytical response on a discriminating interpretation, sustained argument and explicit use of evidence.
Use the appeals as a frame (ethos for credibility, pathos for emotion, logos for reasoning), then identify the rhetorical strategies that carry each (anaphora, tricolon, rhetorical question, antithesis).
For each device, quote it, name it precisely, and account for how it positions the audience, then argue the cumulative effect on the audience's sense of obligation or identity.
Markers reward correct rhetorical terminology, the explicit chain from technique to effect, quoted evidence, and an argument about audience positioning rather than a list of devices.
Practice10 marksIA1-style analytical: Evaluate which of the three Aristotelian appeals does the most persuasive work in a supplied opinion piece. Refer closely to the text.Show worked answer →
"Evaluate which" asks for a judgement, so commit to one appeal as dominant rather than describing all three evenly.
Argue, for example, that pathos carries the piece by mapping the emotive vocabulary, anecdote and intensifying lists against the comparatively thin logos, and weigh the evidence on each side.
Show how the dominant appeal positions the reader and why the others are subordinate, reaching a discriminating judgement rather than a balanced survey.
Markers reward a committed judgement, quoted evidence for each appeal weighed, and analysis of how the appeals interact rather than a catalogue.