Explain the ways in which the two writers try to make you share their feelings and points of view.

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Persuasive Techniques

Explain the ways in which the two writers try to make you share their feelings and points of view.

Both writers employ a variety of persuasive techniques to convey their feelings to the reader. They argue their points of view and adopt different methods to persuade the reader to share these opinions. This is done using different rhetorical devices - emotive language, rhetorical questions, and lots of repetition, when coupled with assonance, alliteration, and evidence, make both these pieces very persuasive.

Rhetorical questions are the most common way that the writer of 'Watching and watching me' influences his reader. He uses them to convey humour, doubt, sarcasm, and also guilt. 'Why are we so fascinated by the doings and ill-doings of others?' This shows how the reader uses his opinion and a rhetorical question to convince us that he is right and we are wrong. There also a list of rhetorical questions early on in this piece which is basically used to drill the authors opinions into us. In the second piece, Young Lawyers by Nelson Mandela, there aren't any rhetorical questions which demonstrates how this may be the main persuasive technique in one case, but there are other techniques which can be more effective in different styles of argument.
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Mandela uses antithesis to great effect. He demonstrates inequality with, 'in some courts we were treated with courtesy, in others contempt'. This is effective as it displays the two extremes of how Mandela was treated.

Another technique, which Mandela uses very often, is repetition. In almost every paragraph Mandela chooses a word or phrase which he repeats in order to emphasise his points of argument. 'crime to be unemployed ... crime to be employed ... crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.' This is also a very good example ...

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