Pragmatic Analysis of Persuasion in Modern British and Iraqi Parliamentary Election Slogans

Abstract

Slogans are noteworthy linguistic tools by which people (and particularly politicians) can perform different social and political functions. One main function is associated with their ability to persuade others to take an action or do something in accordance with the messages they intend to convey. Particularly, politicians utilize election campaign slogans to persuade their audience with their views, programs and agendas. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the speech act of persuasion in forty Modern British and Iraqi Parliamentary Election Campaign Slogans. Based on Searle's (1969, 1975, and 1976),the felicity conditions of persuasion have been derived and applied to the chosen data. The study concludes that persuasion act can be indirectly attained through various syntactic structures, especially declarative, active and simple sentences. Furthermore, non-linguistic elements contribute to the persuasive mission of election slogans. Both English and Arabic languages employ almost the same fabric of slogans to deliver influential messages.