A Convenient Appeal: The Image of Urgency in an Inconvenient Truth

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Recommended: Elements of effective communication

“Lecture” and “boring” are two words often synonymous. A lecture will frequently feature a deluge of scientific data, equitable facts, well-supported inferences, unbiased jargon, charts, graphs, and statistics. And a bored audience. While a lecture can pioneer new scientific exploration and present phenomenal achievement, it holds little value if it cannot inspire its audience. In order for a lecture to interest the everyday individual, it needs to provide a clear connection to the everyday world. Firstly, the speaker must deliver his or her data in a discussion format comprehensible to the audience. Then, the speaker must excite the audience with powerful emotional appeals. An effective lecture – now, truly, a presentation – appeals to an audience by accentuating a necessity and evoking an enthusiasm. The audience finds an immediate, personal significance within the vast data. In his 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore uses a combination of appeals to logic and emotion to stress the urgency of the global warming crisis to an audience of everyday individuals.
Gore’s logical appeals emphasize the danger and significance of global warming in a cogent, engaging multimedia platform. Rather than monotonously expounding upon detail after detail, he uses interactive visual aids to clarify his claims. As Stefan Lovgren, in “Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ Movie: Fact or Hype?,” abbreviates, “the documentary handles the science well.” Gore is confident in the delivery of his information; he talks to his audience with ease and precision. He states, “[t]he relationships are actually very complicated, but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide...

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...rming to an audience of everyday individuals. Without the emotional connection embedded within Gore’s scientific data, the documentary would not impact its audience as greatly. Data and statistics convey important facts, but without an emotional appeal, they do not elicit the urge to act. To lecture an audience is easy; to engage and inspire an audience is not. Powerful emotional appeals link the audience to the information by stressing a necessity and evoking an energy.

Works Cited

An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore. Paramount Classics, 2006. DVD.
Lovgren, Stefan. “Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ Movie: Fact or Hype?” National Geographic News. National Geographic Society, 25 May 2006. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.
Nielsen-Gammon, John W. “An Inconvenient Truth: The Scientific Argument.” GeoJournal 70.1 (2007): 1-12. Springer Link. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.

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