About: Appeal to advantage

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.