Week 12 Discussion — Which Appeal Carries the Speech?

Hook

A friend talks you into a road trip, an ad talks you into a gym membership, and a speaker at a meeting talks a room into signing a letter. Some of those moves respected your judgment and some went around it. This week you learned the three appeals, the three persuasive questions, Monroe's Motivated Sequence, and the line between persuasion and manipulation.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Which appeal does the most work in persuading an audience: ethos, pathos, or logos? Some people say evidence is what finally moves a careful listener; others say nobody listens to evidence from a speaker they do not trust, or acts on a reason they do not feel. Take a position, support it with a real speech, pitch, ad, or request you have seen or given on a non-partisan subject, and use this week's terms, such as ethos, pathos, logos, and the target audience, accurately.

Option B: Where does persuasion cross into manipulation? Some people say any appeal that stirs strong emotion or sets a deadline is already manipulation; others say emotion and urgency are fair when they are in proportion to the evidence and the deadline is real. Take a position, support it with a real fundraising appeal, ad, sales pitch, or request you have seen, and use this week's terms, such as the four manipulation moves, proportionate emotion, and the honest ask, accurately.

There is no single right answer. A fundraiser, a job pitch, a club meeting, or a public address can each be argued well in more than one direction. Keep your example on a campus, community, workplace, or everyday subject. If your example is a speech by a public figure, discuss how it persuades, never whether you agree with the speaker, and never take a side on a live political question.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 12 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. If the chatbot offers to write your appeals or hands you a statistic to support your position, decline the writing and ask for the page behind the number; if there is no page, leave the number out. Describe speeches, ads, and situations, never a named private person, and share only what you are comfortable sharing.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory Public Speaking
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you
ask questions that make me reason it through. Never invent a quotation, a
statistic, a study, a source, or an example I did not give you, and never
write an appeal or an ask for me. If I cite a number, ask me where it comes
from and who produced it. If my example is a speech by a public figure, keep
the talk on how it persuades, never on whether either of us agrees with the
speaker, and never take a side on a live political question.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Which appeal does the most work in persuading an audience: ethos,
pathos, or logos? Some people say evidence is what finally moves a careful
listener; others say nobody listens to evidence from a speaker they do not
trust, or acts on a reason they do not feel. Take a position, support it with
a real speech, pitch, ad, or request you have seen or given on a non-partisan
subject, and use this week's terms, such as ethos, pathos, logos, and the
target audience, accurately.
Option B: Where does persuasion cross into manipulation? Some people say any
appeal that stirs strong emotion or sets a deadline is already manipulation;
others say emotion and urgency are fair when they are in proportion to the
evidence and the deadline is real. Take a position, support it with a real
fundraising appeal, ad, sales pitch, or request you have seen, and use this
week's terms, such as the four manipulation moves, proportionate emotion, and
the honest ask, accurately.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I tell ethos from pathos and ethos from logos by asking where the
  proof lives
- whether I connect my position to a target audience (agreeing, neutral, or
  opposed) rather than to every audience at once
- whether I judge emotion and urgency by their proportion to the evidence
- whether I name a specific manipulation move instead of calling a whole
  appeal bad
- whether my position holds up against the strongest objection

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Every message you send before the
summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 12 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — telling the three appeals apart by where their proof lives, aiming a persuasive message at a target audience, and drawing the line between honest persuasion and the four manipulation moves — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, describe the real speech, pitch, ad, or request, name the appeal you think carried it and where its proof lived, and take a position on which appeal does the most work. For Option B, describe the real appeal, ad, or pitch, name any emotion or deadline it used, and take a position on whether it stayed persuasion or crossed into manipulation. Use this week's terms (persuasion, manipulation, question of fact, question of value, question of policy, ethos, pathos, logos, Monroe's Motivated Sequence, the visualization step, target audience, honest ask, and the four manipulation moves) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that a trusted speaker with no evidence still moves people, or that a real deadline makes urgency honest. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. What you would do next time (one or two sentences). Name one concrete change to an appeal or an ask in your own persuasive speech, and the course idea it serves.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 12 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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