AIS YEAR 10 ENGLISH THE BIG IDEA DOCUMENTARY STUDY

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

As you view ‘Bowling for Columbine’, make a record of

the following PERSUASIVE DEVICES and how they

are used

DEVICE / DEFINITION / EXAMPLE FROM THE TEXT ‘BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE’ / EFFECTS / VIEWER POSITIONING
APPEALS
  • Authority
  • Justice
  • Security
  • Family Values
  • Fear
  • Freedom
  • Loyalty / Patriotism
  • Self-Interest
  • Tradition and Culture
/ Appeals rely on the emotions and basic human needs and desires. Our need for security, for example, may prompt a belief that gun ownership is necessary.
ATTACK / Can be verbal or achieved by actions against a perceived villain, commonly distant eg. ‘the government’, ‘big business’.
BIAS / A one-sided view of an issue. Designed to influence the audience to the presenter’s point of view.
CAUSE AND EFFECT / Simplification of an issue into if ‘a’ exists then ‘b’ will inevitably follow. For example, if guns are legal then mass murders will increase.
CONNOTATIONS
  • Positive
  • Negative
/ The feelings, emotions, subtleties suggested by a word or phrases, as opposed to the word itself.
EMOTIVE LANGUAGE / Language specifically chosen to evoke or provoke an emotional response.
EXAGGERATION / HYPERBOLE / Can be verbal exaggeration or overstatement or physical in the case of caricature.
FACT / The presentation of truthful details.
GENERALISATION / A statement or view that makes a claim about a group and ignores specific differences about members within the group.
HUMOUR
  • Satire
  • Parody
  • Sarcasm
/ Satire ridicules human weaknesses and hypocrisies with the intention of bringing about change.
An imitation or mimicking of a text, especially using exaggeration to create humour.
Bitter or cutting speech, designed to hurt the person to whom it is directed.
INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE
  • Personal Pronouns
  • Collective Pronouns
/ Works to reduce the distance between the composer and the responder, so that the responder is included and thereby can be manipulated.
I, you, he, she, it, me, you, him, her
We, their, us, them
JUXTAPOSITIONING / Purposeful placement of ideas or visuals next to each other to achieve a particular effect
OPINION / Views held as probable but not necessarily proven or supported by fact.
REPETITION / Repeated words or images to reiterate or stress key ideas.
RHETORICAL QUESTIONS / A question asked where no answer is expected because the answer is implied.
STATISTICS / Figures, such as ratios or percentages given to support a persuasive argument