Organizing A Negative Letter to Peer or Subordinate
Earlier this semester we discussed thinking of
Ethos as power.
We discussed various types of power, such as the power of authority, the
power of numbers etc. These lessons are relevant to negative messages, as well.
As we said earlier, psychological
Reactance
The easiest way to do this is to make them feel smaller than life.
Toward this goal, we can organize our messages like this:
1) Use a rhetorical question.
Begin with a reference to the reader’s sanity.
This will make the reader stumble over the question by being caught “off
guard”. They may wonder whether you
are serious or kidding, being sarcastic or just angry.
Meanwhile, you gain control of the communication.
Example: Are you crazy?
2) Add punctuation for emphasis.
Depending on your needs, add:
An exclamation point: Are you crazy?!
A couple explanation points: Are you crazy?!!!
An adjective: A you f###ing crazy?!!!
3) The insult.
Example: Insult the audience’s
intelligence.
Example: Insult the audience’s
gender.
Example: Insult the audience’ body.
Example: Insult the audience’s
race.
4) If necessary, you may wish to combine #2 and #3.
Example: You are an f###ing insult to your gender!!!
5) Establish a general, often genetic relationship between the insult
and the audience’s heritage.
Because the audience may not know who his or her father is, it’s best to
insult the audience’s mother.
Example: Yo mama so fat she goes
beep beep beep when she backs up.
Example: Yo mama so ugly that when
you were born the doctor slapped her.
Example: Yo mama so stupid she got
hit by a parked car.
6) Help the reader with the solution. Ask him or her to
extricate his or her head from his or her arse.