Communication is an extremely important factor in our lives and much of the time is spent trying to persuade others towards our views. Logic and argumentation are central to persuasive communication. This document will outline the purpose of persuasive communication and its structure. Persuasive communication will be defined in a way that the main objective of persuasion is to convince the audience of the thesis, the thesis being the conclusion of a discourse. An integral part of persuasive communication is argumentation and its format will be discussed. In order for a document to be persuasive it will be shown that it is necessary for it to contain a valid argument that lends support to the conclusion. The basic structure of an argument will be explained. It should be noted, however, that in the scope of this essay it is not appropriate to define all possible types of argumentation, so only the elements common to all arguments will be identified. The importance of logic will be shown with relevance to the way that it is used to identify valid arguments. Again it is necessary to limit the scope of the essay to defining logic within argumentation. Fallacies will be defined and it will be shown how arguments containing them fail to become persuasive. Persuasive communication is essentially based on a logically constructed argument that is strong enough to change the audience's opinion to agree with the conclusion.
             If others are to agree with our conclusions within a piece of communication, we must persuade them of the points we are making. Persuasion is used to make others believe that what we are saying is acceptable. Persuasion is described in Tyler, King & Browning (1999, p.137) as a "deliberate attempt to impose ideas on another individual". This means that when we are trying to persuade people we are imposing our views on them. Another way of looking at persuasion is to describe it as an attempt to make others see w...