Statistical Representation of the Volatility of Scientific Interest in the Category of Persuasiveness as a Subject of the Linguistic Research

Abstract

The article presents the results of research of the category of persuasiveness in academic linguistic works. Persuasiveness is considered in the present paper as a property of discourse, realized by means of verbal influence on the consciousness of the addressee with the purpose of changing his worldview. The urgency of the study is due to the growing interest of the research community to persuasive potential of discourse and mechanisms of verbal impact on the target audience, as well as the crucial importance of studying tactics and strategies of persuasive impact, aimed at inducing the recipient of information to share the views of the addressee. Analysis of the selected research works has shown that, despite the existence of different approaches to the interpretation of the notion «persuasiveness» and the resulting differences of methodical approaches to the study of the phenomenon, the universal meaning of the concept of «persuasiveness» in the linguistic aspect can be reduced to the idea that persuasiveness can be defined as the manipulative use of special language techniques aimed at strengthening the addressee’s arguments. The purpose of the paper is to identify and systematize the dynamics and research directions of the persuasiveness study. The study was conducted on the basis of theses selected form the «DisserCat» electronic scientific library of theses and abstracts. As a result 118 theses, published during 2000-2021 period, were catalogued and analyzed. The obtained results allowed to consider and generalize various approaches to the study of the persuasiveness, as well as to determine the dynamics and vectors of the interest to the studied phenomenon. The following research methods were used in the paper: targeted sampling, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, content analysis, statistical observation and processing of sample texts. Visualization was carried out by using Microsoft Office Excel program. A quantitative and chronological analysis of the selected works allows us to conclude that the interest in studying the realization of the category of persuasiveness is far from losing its relevance; on the contrary, from a prognostic point of view one should expect a significant demand for its research.