An appeal to advantage is a rhetorical device in which the speaker encourages his or her audience to perform some action by representing that action as being in the audience's best interest.
An appeal to advantage can also be a request from someone in a position of power to someone who is in a socially subordinate position; the request is specifically for the subordinate to perform an act contrary to the subordinate's wishes, such that the subordinate is forced to commit the act in order to satisfy a more significant need. The appeal is specifically most expedient or advantageous to the person in power, but is also presented as forwarding the subordinate's interests in some significant way.
Read more about Appeal To Advantage: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words appeal to, appeal and/or advantage:
“Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us...”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5:20.
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)