A Proposal argument is a "call to action" for a particular audience and then calls the particular audience to take action (Ramage 311). Proposal arguments hinge around the identification and tailoring the message to a particular audience. And the message must address certain questions in order to be appropriate to the audience (Ramage 325). Who is the audience? What information do you need to give in order to get them to be motivated to care? What view do you want them to gain after reading the proposal argument? What change in behavior do you want them to exhibit? What is the personal cost to acting on the proposal argument? What alternative solutions do you need to give to objections raised? (Ramage 325).
John Henry Newman's fable illustrates the importance of an intended audience to the proposal audience:
The Man once invited the Lion to be his guest, and received him with princely hospitality. The Lion had the run of a magnificent palace, in which there were a vast many things to admire. There were large saloons and long corridors, richly furnished and decorated, and filled with a profusion of fine specimens of sculpture and painting, the works of the first masters in either art. The subjects represented were various; but the most prominent of them had an especial interest for the noble animal who stalked by them. It was that of the Lion himself; and as the owner of the mansion led him from one apartment into another, he did not fail to direct his attention to the indirect homage which these various groups and tableaux paid to the importance of the lion tribe.
There was, however, one remarkable feature in all of them, to which the host, silent as he was from politeness, seemed not at all insensible; that diverse as were these representations, in one point they all agreed, that the man was always victorious, and the lion was always overcome. (Cahill 7-8).
Who did the Man think his audience was? Was the Lion the intended audience? Obviously, the Man viewed the Lion as his audience in his tour and as a guest in his palace. The Man did not view the importance of how the depictions of lions in the artwork would be viewed by the Lion. In fact when quizzed by the Man about his views of the artwork, the Lion replied, "Lions would have fared better, had lions been the artists" (Cahill 8).
The Man did not keep the perception of the Lion in mind when he invited the Lion to the tour and to be a guest in his palace. Therefore, any good perceptions and motivations would not be shared by the Lion. Keeping this illustration in mind is essential in understanding the importance of the intended audience in the drafting of a proposal argument.
Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Print.
Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment