The Art of the Audio Essay
PWR 2 Fall Quarter 2007
Jonah G. Willihnganz
Stanford University

Rhetorical Strategies for the Audio Essay
Synthesized from Student Lists of Strategies

This list is a resource for making your piece as persuasive as possible from a rhetorical point of view.  You have helped create this list and you have witnessed all of these strategies in action in the twenty audio essays you have listened to: Flight and Invisibility, The WASPs, Amerigo Vespucci, Pinpointing the Placebo Effect, The White Coat, The Underground Lunchroom, Vietnam's Postwar's Legacy, Mapping the Ambient World, Oakland Scenes, City X, One Eye Open, Behind the Man, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, The White Stripes, The President Calling, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, and student essays such as Me and My Monkey, Presidential Campaign Songs, and The Little Language that Could.

Keep the strategies in mind as you continue working on your script and begin to assemble the audio components. You'll notice that some of the strategies flow from the constraints of the medium,while others flow from the opportunities of the medium. Some, of course, are just good rhetorical strategies in any medium.

I. General

1. Use all traditional means of persuasion, but especially appeals to ethos and pathos. Remember that there are two main kinds of each appeal:

Ethos: appeal to your own credibility or to figures/experts who hold same point of view. Make us believe your point of view because of who you are.
Pathos: appeal to your audience's emotional sensibility and ingrained, even unconscious beliefs. You can do this through anecdotes, images, even sounds. Make us believe your point of view because of what you make us feel.

2. Dramatize—i.e., demonstrate through direct evidence, testimony, etc—the argument of the essay as much as possible.  Another way of saying this is: use the appeals to pathos and ethos that work so well in this medium. 

3. Use only what is necessary to advance the point of view of the piece—to persuade us.

4. Be sure the purpose of the essay (if not the argument itself) is clearly signaled near the start.

II. The Opening

5. Begin with common ground, something with which the audience is already familiar. This can be important for pieces with a strong polemic.

6. Begin with a concrete, vivid image or sounds, especially those that anchor us in time and place and/or dramatize the point of view of the essay. This can be important for pieces with a more subtle polemic.

7. Early on, indicate the context of your subject—the "conversation" in which the essay intervenes and makes a contribution. This can help set up the motive of the inquiry.

8. If describing the status quo or identifying a general trend, favor a typical example over long, general exposition.

9. Early on, address any debilitating objections your audience might have to your subject or your point of view.

10. Early on, indicate explicitly or implicitly, your stakes—how the discussion is valuable, why the audience should care—and do it early. Sometimes we have called this "value step." Traditionally, "timeliness" and "appropriateness" are chief ways to establish the value step. 

III. Organization

11. Develop the essay in a coherent way, structuring it chronologically, spatially, or logically. You might use more than one of these schemes. When using a rhetorical question to make a transition, make clear why that particular question is being asked at that particular point.

12. Use discrete scenes or analytical segments to build the essay and set these scenes with a few concrete, particular details. (See Gutkind)

13. Create a dramatic arc—a story-line that has rising action (e.g., the progression of discovery) to keep the audience engaged (by suspense) and to provide a sense of "payoff" at the end of the essay. (See Burroway)

14. Preview and Signpost and strongly.  At the start and at each step (sometimes a section, sometimes a paragraph) signal to us briefly where we are going (and later in the essay, where we have been).  The bluntest forms of this are numbering (first, second) or some form of inference ("so if. . . then we must examine. . . ). 

15. Create a narrator or point of view with which the audience might strongly identify, and use this identification to help persuade us. 

IV. Use of Sources

16. Use sources (whether texts or actualities) to help tell the story of the essay—i.e., to help situate and develop the argument. Use explaining tape rather than narration when possible.

17. Introduce sources, especially actualities, immediately. Integrate sources judiciously so that they serve but never take over the piece.

18. Repeat in different language, interpret, or emphasize the an aspect of what sources will say or have said.

19. Balance narration and sources so that we do not become overwhelmed by either the narrator(s) or the sources.

VII. Clarity and Cohesion

20. Create cohesion of narration sections by following the topic string or Old—>New principles. (See Nunberg)

21. Keep the density of exposition relatively constant and be aware of how long it takes for the auditor to process the information you are delivering. Keep in mind Glass' 45 second rule.

22. When explaining difficult concepts or complex processes, use analogies or typical examples. Provide concrete examples for abstract ideas or values.

23. Use parallelism and symmetry in constructing sentences (e.g., clauses constructed in parallel) and the organization of material (e.g., use a similar analytic structure in a comparison).

24. Use repetition—of language, sound, or structures—to create cohesion, emphasis, and unity. For example, use the same music for all major transitions, or begin each segment of an inquiry essay with the same rhetorical question.

25. Use repetition, especially of phrases at the beginning (anaphora) or end (epistrophe) of sentences, to direct our attention and create emphasis.

26. Create a memorable phrase that summarizes the point of view, something that may be repeated.

V. Voice

27. Use the voice itself to establish your credibility and to gain your audience's sympathy. 

28. Use the tone, pacing, and inflections of your voice—rather than script—to indicate your posture, or the change of your posture, toward the subject: e.g., reverence, affection, sarcasm, awe, suspicion, enthusiasm, etc.

29. Match the sound of the narrator's voice (inflection, tone, rate) with the meaning of the words being spoken.

30. Vary the rate of delivery to indicate emphasis—faster for less important, contextualizing information, slower for critical turns of the argument or reflection.

31. Use tone, pacing, inflection and especially the juxtaposition of sound (music or sound beds) and speech to create drama and emphasis—e.g., fade down to silence a sound bed just as a dramatic point is made.

VI. Sound

32. Use music, sound effects, or sound beds to establish setting or mood, make transitions, create cohesion, and to indicate the posture, or changing posture, toward the essay's subject.

33. Use music, sound effects or sound beds as a way of establishing metaphor or metonymy (e.g., associate appropriate music or sound with aspects of your research or inquiry). Use sound to convey the meaning of a section or specific scene or reflection.

34. Use pauses or a sudden silence behind the narrator's voice to create emphasis (i.e., the "spotlight effect" that Ira Glass describes).

VIII. Other

35. Use tropes and figures such as metaphor, metonymy, personification, hyperbole, analogy, direct address, and the rhetorical question for their specific effects.  These tropes can be especially effective in oratory if used sparingly but pointedly.

36. Use concrete, sensory (sight, sound, taste, smell, feel) details and vivid imagery.

37. To provide a sense of unity, close the essay with something that recalls the opening.