Choose an elected official and contact him or her in attempt to use written persuasion on a specific issue.

This project will actually consist of two parts: One in which you analyze the rhetoric employed on this politician's website, and discuss how best to rhetorically present yourself after consideration of the persona and stance they have chosen to project

Second part consisting of a written correspondence, composed by you, with a specific goal that you want this politician to do, endorse or acknowledge (or not) For example, a particular cause or bill that you want to encourage them to take a certain stance on. Your choice of goal is an important part of this assignment ­-- that is, you should pick something realistic, but not already a foregone conclusion. To put it another way: Trying to persuade someone with a strong public stance to completely reverse their opinion...isn’t going to happen, no matter how sophisticated your rhetoric here. And on the flip side of that, picking something they already stand for and agreeing isn't persuasion -- it's encouragement. A good choice of goal here would be to pick some issue on which this politician does not already hold a strong public stance, or something on which you might realistically persuade him or her to adjust a point of view, or act in another way to achieve a common goal.

Identify your rhetorical strategies in this letter with inserted comments or some similar means. In Word, this is easy to do by clicking Review / New Comment, or ALT + I + M, or Insert / New Comment. Ethos, pathos, logos -- all of these are at your disposal here, and should be deployed accordingly, along with other rhetorical tools or devices we've discussed or read about.