It's an early start to your day, and as you wake up to your alarm, you hesitate with your finger over the snooze button. It's your first decision of the day. If you hit snooze, you will cause your routine to fall behind. You might even cause yourself to oversleep. If you don't hit snooze, you cause yourself to miss those few more precious minutes of shut-eye.
Every choice you make sets in motion a causal chain. You build causal chains using cause and effect relationships. You will reference causes and effects liberally throughout essays and short answers. Much of the time, they will be the basis for your arguments.
Cause and Effect Rhetorical Mode Definition
Cause and effect is a rhetorical mode.
A rhetorical mode is a way for writers to communicate to their audience.
Using the rhetorical mode of cause and effect, a writer demonstrates to the reader how something happens.
The cause and effect relationship connects why something happens to what happens.
This is a simple but potentially complex relationship. Here's a simple example of how you might use cause and effect in an essay or short answer.
In the story, Helga causes the friends to go their separate ways.
This example appears like a claim.
A claim is a position that requires support or arguments.
Although a cause-and-effect relationship can be a part of your claim, it can also be a part of your argument.
An argument is a reason to believe a given claim.
Here's an example containing a claim in the first sentence and an argument that uses cause and effect in the second sentence.
Bob is a villain. Bob is a villain because he causes the protagonist to experiment with drugs.
As mentioned earlier, cause and effect form causal chains. This is when a cause leads to an effect that then becomes the cause of another effect, and so on.
The longer a chain gets, the more complicated it becomes. You can break down causal chains to understand vast networks of ideas and interactions.
The Purpose of Cause and Effect in Writing
"Cause and effect" is important in writing because a writer can use it to establish causal chains. Causal chains can connect causes to distant effects.
A causal chain is a series of causes and effects that link a cause to a more distant effect.
You can use causal chains for various purposes in your writing.
Causal Chains in the Abstract
You can use causal chains to establish why something happens or happened, both in terms of a story and in the real world.
The dam project will dry up the river. A dry river will cause its fish to die. Thus, the dam project will kill the river's fish.
This causal chain presents no argument or solution. It merely establishes a causal chain in the abstract. However, you can apply a causal chain to an argumentative format.
Causal Chains in Essays
In essay writing, a causal chain links your claim to your argument and your argument to your evidence. The following example uses a question-and-answer format to highlight the causal chain.
Bob is a villain. (claim)
Why?
Because he causes the protagonist to experiment with drugs. (argument)
What does Bob do to cause this?
On page 13, he bullies the protagonist for being sober. (evidence)
Turn this around, and you have a causal chain. Bob shames the protagonist, which causes the protagonist to experiment with drugs, which causes Bob to be the story's villain.
Accuracy in Cause and Effect
Because you can use cause and effect for many purposes in writing, these relationships must be accurate. To be accurate, these relationships need to be specific.
For example, say you climb up in a tree and fall. You might say something like this, then.
Climbing high in a tree caused me to fall.
However, say you climb up in a tree and don't fall. Say your friends cheer for you. You might say something like this, then.
Climbing high in a tree caused me to receive praise.
Both examples have the same root cause: climbing up in a tree. How can their outcomes be different, then? They have different outcomes because they have different causal chains not specified in these examples.
For instance, a more direct cause of "falling from the tree" might be "you lost your balance." So your causal chain would look more like this:
Climbing up in a tree caused me to become scared.
Becoming scared caused me to lose balance.
Losing balance caused me to fall from the tree.
In the example where you received the praise of your friends, you never lost your balance, which makes its causal chain different.
Fig. 1 - Causal chains differ hypothetically and in practice.
Accuracy is critical when dealing with cause and effect. To ensure accuracy, establish a causal chain that genuinely suits your topic and doesn't miss something along the line. When you fail to connect your chain of cause and effect, you might end up with a rhetorical fallacy (logical fallacy).
A cause can lead to multiple effects. However, a cause can never lead to mutually exclusive effects. For instance, pouring two chemicals together can't make the mixture both explode and not explode. If you don't know the direct cause of something, like with a future project or event, this is where arguments occur. For instance, you might use past experiments as evidence to deduce the effect of mixing the two chemicals.
Cause and Effect Rhetorical Mode Examples
Here are some examples of cause and effect used as a rhetorical mode.
This clickbait article was a cause of misinformation.
Remember, as a rhetorical mode, "cause and effect" communicates something to the audience. In this case, the writer uses cause and effect to explain the harm of a clickbait article.
In the story, June threw food at Peter, who then ran away from home.
There is no obvious argument present in this instance of cause and effect. Here, the writer uses cause and effect to help create a synopsis for the story.
Note that this example does not use the word "cause." The words "cause" and "effect" do not need to appear in an example of cause and effect. The important part is the relationship.
Here's a final example of cause and effect.
The demand for agricultural space has resulted in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
You can also present facts or historical events in terms of cause and effect.
Cause and Effect Essay Structure
Like an argumentative essay, a cause and effect essay consists of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Introduction of a Cause and Effect Essay
In the introduction of your essay, you establish the cause you will explore.
The power company will initiate rolling blackouts for homes.
From here, your essay will proceed in one of two ways. In the first kind of cause-and-effect essay, you will argue that rolling blackouts will cause various things. In the second kind of cause and effect essay, you will identify the possible results of rolling blackouts.
The difference is in the style of argumentation. The first essay requires taking a stance. The second essay is more neutral and requires you to be open-minded.
Body Paragraphs of a Cause and Effect Essay
You will probably use three body paragraphs like in a 5 paragraph essay. Each body paragraph will contain a topic sentence (or argument) followed by the evidence needed to support it.
One effect of rolling blackouts might be decreased fire hazards during peak hours.
This is an example of a topic sentence. You would follow it with evidence that suggests power lines would be less likely to catch fire if their load is lessened during peak hours.
Your cause and effect essay would contain three such body paragraphs. Each would have its own argument or topic sentence with evidence or support.
Fig. 2 - Use evidence from studies and history to establish causality.
Conclusion Paragraph of a Cause and Effect Essay
In your conclusion paragraph, you should take the opportunity to explore further causes beyond those explored in the body paragraphs. Remember, your body paragraphs only contain immediate effects of the original cause. However, as you've learned, "cause and effect" does not end with one cause and one effect. Effects become their own causes and so on, forming causal chains.
So, in your conclusion paragraph, discuss the continued or future impact of the effects you discussed in your body paragraphs. These concluding effects will give the reader the impression that the original cause is significant and lingering.
Here's an example.
Decreased fires resulting from blackouts will continue to impact the environment positively in the future. With the American West suffering from fires, poor air quality, and massive environmental damage, every unstarted fire is a huge win for the welfare of everyone in the area.
Use your essay as a starting point to discuss causal relationships.
Cause and Effect Rhetorical Mode - Key Takeaways
- The cause and effect relationship connects why something happens to what happens.
- Cause and effect form causal chains. These chains link cause to effect, cause to effect, and so on.
- In essay writing, a causal chain links your claim to your argument and your argument to your evidence.
- Accuracy is key in the use of cause and effect.
- A cause-and-effect essay contains an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Your goal is to explore a cause and its possible or actual effects.
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