Rephrasing is not arguing, but it is still persuasive: An experimental approach to perlocutionary effects of rephrase

Abstract

Rephrase is a pragmatically complex and persuasively appealing, yet still not systematically explored communication phenomenon. Evidence from corpus data indicates that speakers rephrase frequently in argumentative settings. In light of this empirical evidence, it is a tenable assumption that speakers (are perceived to) gain rhetorical advantages by rephrasing their own or someone else's contribution. In this paper, we present three experimental studies that seek to shed light on the potential persuasive appeal of rephrase.In our set of experiments, we exploit examples taken from the corpora of rephrased arguments annotated with OVA+ (Online Visualisation of Argument) software as material for the design of experiments that seek to test the rhetorical effectiveness of two sub-types of rephrase, namely rephrase specification and rephrase generalization. In particular, we observe whether judgements on persuasiveness are related to judgements on the perceived trustworthiness of the speaker.Our results suggest that rephrasing a contribution can impact both the perceived persuasiveness of a message and the perceived trustworthiness of the speaker. Moreover, our findings indicate that speakers perceive the segments connected through a rephrase relation as being very similar in content, which in turn suggests that rephrase is not perceived as providing a separate argument.