The INTENSIFY / DOWNPLAY Schema
TECHNIQUES

Composition Composition
Intensifying by pattern and arrangement uses design, variations in sequence, and in proportion -- to add to the force of words, images, movements, and contexts. How we put together, or compose, is important. For example, in verbal communication: the choice of words, their level of abstraction, their patterns within sentences, the strategy and structure (e.g. the "Pitch") of longer messages. In a wider context, any verbal composition is part of an implied narrative, a suggested story, script, or storyline, giving meaning to a person's life. Logic, both inductive and deductive, puts ideas together systematically. Nonverbal compositions involve visuals (color, shape, size): aural (background music, sounds); mathematics (quantities, relationships), time and space patterns. Composition involves the whole putting-together process of purposeful words and images appropriate to the intent, situation, and audience.
Applied to ADVERTISING, you can ask these questions:

  • Is there the underlying basic structural pattern of "the pitch"?
    >> Use this fingertip formula: (1) HI (2) TRUST ME (3) YOU NEED (4) HURRY (5) BUY

  • What are the attention-getting (HI) words, images, devices?

  • What are the confidence-building (TRUST ME) techniques: words, images, smiles, endorsers, brand names?

  • Is the main desire-stimulating appeal (YOU NEED) focused on our benefit-seeking to get or to keep a "good," or to avoid or to get rid of a "bad"?

  • Are you part of the target audience? If not, who is? Are you part of an unintended audience? When and where did the ads appear?

  • Are product claims made for: superiority, quantity, beauty, efficiency, scarcity, novelty, stability, reliability, simplicity, utility, rapidity, or safety? Are any audience-centered "added values" suggested or implied by using any of the two dozen common associations?

  • Is there any urgency-stressing (HURRY) by words, sounds, movement, pace?

  • Are there specific response-triggering words (BUY): to buy, to do, to call?

    Or is the ad a "soft sell" ad (common for standard products) conditioning for later purchase?

    Or is it a "feel good" ad (corporate image-building ad, PR, public relations), a soft long-term campaign (as those corporate ads on PBS-TV) conditioning us to feel good about the company, to encourage favorable public opinion on its side (against government regulations, laws, taxes)? Persuaders always seek some kind of response!
  • Commercial ads often have a wider implied narrative, an underlying script or storyline, suggesting a "lifestyles" story with "You" as the central character in a consumer-oriented world, seeking personal, individual happiness (pleasures, wealth, esteem, success) by buying products, getting stuff; or getting relief (from pain, problems, unhappiness) with their product as the solution. Do you, can you identify with those good characters, those "friend figures"? Their hopes and fears?
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Applied to POLITICAL RHETORIC, you can ask these questions

  • Is the overall structure that of "the pitch" simply asking for a one-time response? (vote!) Or, can it be described in terms of a "pep talk" (seeking collective committed action)?
  • What are the key content words: nouns (person, places, things, concepts) and verbs (actions)? The related adjectives, adverbs?

  • What positive claims about self, or negative charges about others, are made? Are they explicitly stated? Implicitly suggested?

  • What generalities? What specifics? What absolutes (e.g. "it is..."); what qualifiers ("perhaps...maybe")? What hypotheticals, conditionals ("if...then")?

  • What figures of speech: Metaphors? Rhetorical questions? Hyperbole (overstatement)? Litotes (understatement)? Puns? Irony?

  • What nonverbals (e.g. smiles, frowns, tone of voice, music, backgrounds)?

  • What sentence patterns are used: balanced, parallel structures? Climactic order?

  • How are the larger structures (speeches, paragraphs, essays) organized? Are the ideas clear, coherent? What are the openers, closers, transitionals? What sequence of ideas? What proportion? What emphasis? What overall strategy? What wider context?

  • Political and religious rhetoric often assumes or suggests a larger story, script, or storyline featuring "You" -- acting in a role as part of a group (a cause, a movement, a political party, a church) in a wider social context.

    Suc a role assumes or implies a belief (a basic worldview), a purpose (goal, direction) and a plan (a process, a way, a script, steps to be taken) to get there, using certain behaviors (specific acts, jobs, tasks, duties to be done), and certain rules (laws, a code of conduct, commandments, a list of "shoulds") to be followed.

Expect people to intensify by means of repetition, association, and composition.

A good axiom about how to counter a propaganda blitz by advertisers or politicians is: When they Intensify, Downplay.
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