Analysing Argument: Mapping Persuasion and Its Effects
What you must understand
Analysing argument asks you to examine how a writer or speaker attempts to persuade an audience. You must understand contention and supporting arguments, structure and sequencing (how the argument develops), tone and shifts in tone, appeals (to logic, emotion, authority, values, fairness), evidence and its use, and language devices (inclusive language, repetition, rhetorical questions, anecdote, statistics, imagery, irony). Crucially, you must analyse how the argument works on its intended audience, not whether you agree with it.
Traps that appear in questions
- Listing devices without analysis. Naming "inclusive language" without explaining what it invites the audience to feel or do.
- Arguing the issue. The task is to analyse persuasion, not to take a side.
- Ignoring the visual or multimodal element when one is present in the material.
- Missing tone shifts. A writer may move from reasonable to indignant; noting the shift shows sophisticated reading.
- Treating evidence as self-evidently persuasive. Explain why a statistic or anecdote is persuasive to this audience.
- Ignoring audience positioning. Always connect technique to how the reader is positioned to respond.
Rule of thumb
Write in analytical present tense and use the pattern: "The writer [technique] in order to [effect], positioning the audience to [response]." Track the argument's movement from opening to close.
Worked example: "The writer opens with a personal anecdote about a family forced to relocate, establishing an empathetic tone before introducing statistics on rental costs. This sequencing - emotion first, evidence second - positions readers to receive the data as confirmation of a human cost they have already felt, strengthening the call for policy change."