Use of Doubt To Persuade Essay -- Successful Persuasion Essays

Persuasion goes on around us everyday, all the time, on television, on advertisements, even in conversations with friends. Perhaps because of this, much has been written on how to persuade more effectively. Most of this literature is built upon the notion that to persuade is to urge successfully and completely. Going along these lines, certainty and confidence are logical complements to effective persuasion, since we cannot hope to convince others when we are ourselves in doubt. Doubt, therefore, is felt to be at the other end of the spectrum and antithetical to persuasion. But the art of persuasion is a human art, and so it is a living art, which cannot be satisfactorily summed up between the covers of self-improvement guides. In reality, successful persuasion can somewhat deviate from the conventional criteria of certainty; in fact, even doubt can be used to persuade. This exciting possibility appears unlikely from the start, because there is an inherent paradox in the notion that doubt can persuade. This contradiction is even clearer when we consider persuasion in the form of a speech given to a large audience. To be able to hold his own in front of a crowd, the speaker, surely, must be certain of himself and what he wants to say. But there is a possible approach by which orators can round the corner of persuading with doubt, and even make doubt work to their advantage. Given that the doubt is a shared concern of both the speaker and his audience, a candid confession of uncertainty may open new emotional inroads into the audience. By serving as a common denominator and a common challenge to both parties, a shared doubt when brought into the open can direct the combined energies of the listeners towards finding a workable so... ...nd genuine than an outward show of sorrow. In this case, to contrive is to constrict. Doubt as an instinct embedded in persuasion transcends common rhetoric as it moves beyond the rational sphere of intellect into the domain of unbridled emotions. For this reason, and also because it was with an intention to explore persuasion beyond conventional notions that we set out to study the use of doubt in the first place, it is impossible and indeed unnecessary to encapsulate the skill of persuading with doubt within any sort of generalising guidelines. To subject this practice to prescriptive limits is to sever its lifeline-the vital element of spontaneity that moves with circumstances. As Lee lamented, "sometimes, history takes many devious turns"; it was exactly through one such quirk of history that his speech in 1965 achieved such astonishing payoffs ("Press" 9).