Means Of Persuasion Research Articles

A Study on the Persuasive Function of Metadiscourse in Hotel Responses to Negative Reviews on TripAdvisor

With the flourishing of tourism, more and more travelers tend to look at reviews on travel websites before booking accommodations. To minimize the possible unfavorable influence generated by negative reviews on websites, hotels tend to provide persuasive responses to negative reviews. Metadiscourse resource, as a linguistic resource, can be possibly used for such persuasive purpose in hotel responses to negative reviews. Taking TripAdvisor, one popular global travel website based in America, as an example, the present study explores the types of metadiscourse used in hotel responses to negative reviews and their role in achieving specific persuasive goals. 200 English responses to negative reviews from 50 hotels at the top five destinations were collected and analyzed. Metadiscourse markers were identified and located with the help of AntConc 3.5.9 (Windows) 2020 and Microsoft Word. The results show that nine types of metadiscourse resources are used in hotel responses to negative reviews on TripAdvisor, and interactional metadiscourse markers are more frequently adopted than interactive ones. Furthermore, it is found that metadiscourse markers can help achieve persuasive goals such as restoring the damaged reputation, winning trust, and enhancing rapport. This research complements the study on metadiscourse by looking at it in the genre of review response and explores the practicality of Aristotle’s three rhetorical means of persuasion in explaining the persuasive functions in business discourse. Hopefully, this study will spire hotels to take advantage of different types of metadiscourse resources in their attempt to achieve persuasive goals in their responses to negative reviews.

‘When the Land Cannot Support the People Any More’

Abstract This article examines the use of a popular Chinese formulation, yifang shuitu yanghuo buliao yifangren (‘the soil and water of a place cannot support the local people’), in China’s poverty-alleviation resettlement by focusing on the case of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The official narrative that the formulation points to is that the native land of Tibetans living in ‘harsh’ environments can no longer support them and cannot enable them to escape from ‘poverty’; they thus need to be resettled. The article shows that, while the degree to which the formulation holds true is debatable even from a government perspective, local officials find the authority embedded in the formulation, originating as it has from the central government, useful as a means of persuasion in getting Tibetans to agree to resettle and thus facilitating policy implementation on the ground. This finding echoes earlier research on the usefulness of political language for authorities in China at different levels of the administration.

Linguistic and Stylistic Features of English Public Speeches

Political communication plays a special role in the life of modern society. Political speeches can be used to judge the direction of the development of political relations between states and the priorities of politicians in various spheres of social and political life. A political public speech is nothing but the interaction of a politician with the audience, a means of propaganda, a presentation of his position and views, a means of persuasion, and a tool for the power struggle. In political speeches, the important role of language as a means of struggle for power and a way to retain it is especially evident. This determines the relevance of studying the linguistic and stylistic features of political speech and identifying effective ways of linguistic influence on a wide audience. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the description of linguistic and stylistic means that contribute to the creation of an effective political speech in English on the example of the speeches of US President Donald Trump, whose speech style is of great interest to linguists. The article aims to describe the linguistic and stylistic means of creating expressiveness that Trump prefers in his speeches. An equally important objective is to determine the main functions of using linguistic and stylistic devices in a political speech.

A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse and Its Persuasive Function in Advertising Discourse

Advertising plays an indispensable role in spreading information and it highly influences and persuades consumers to act in a variety of ways. This paper investigates the distribution and use of interactional metadiscourse in Cosmopolitan in 2022, as well as analyzes the role they play in the construction of persuasion. A total of 50 advertisements were included, and both qualitative and quantitive methods were used in the analysis. Based on the classification model of interactional metadiscourse proposed by Hyland (2005), this study calculated the frequency of interactional metadiscourse in ads and explained how the author used these metadiscourse markers to interact with consumers. Results revealed that attitude markers and engagement markers appeared most frequently. It means advertisers are primarily focused on consumers, as they are effective means of persuasion. The study concluded that interactional metadiscourse successfully fulfills its persuasive function and contributes effectively to the success of ads.

World at Democratic Crossroads: Seeking Institutionalist Insights

The conventional view of democracy is that people vote to signal what they want, thereby selecting the policymakers they believe are most appropriate. Political disenchantment and fits of socio-political anger, however, clash with this view. The paper deals with this inconsistency by discussing the relation between policy and the polity. It begins by contending that neoliberalism generated not only dramatic economic and social consequences but also a general lack of confidence in the polity. Drawing on insights from Adolph Lowe, it argues that neoliberal policies have not only structured economies in a “pro-market” fashion. They have also led people to internalize the rules of the neoliberal game on the grounds that “There Is No Alternative”. Consequently, they created the consensus they needed to persist. On more theoretical grounds, policy is presented here not as a mere consequence of electoral conviction but as a means of persuasion. This suggests that policymakers are advantaged in shaping people’s views of the economy and of society. Policymakers, however, include not only governments but also intermediate agencies: charities and other organizations. There is scope for these agencies to pursue alternative goals and advance views of the world that differ from the status quo

The Aristotelian Rhetorical Theory: A Framework for Analyzing Pakistani Beauty Products Advertising

Advertising is one of the most basic forms of communication through media. Persuasion is one of the primary purposes of advertising. Customers are persuaded to buy products by advertising using different persuasive techniques. Both men and women increasingly rely on beauty products to look beautiful and have attractive spouses. Advertisements use rhetorical devices to persuade their viewers. Advertisements use language to achieve the purpose of persuasion. This paper analyzes advertising language considering Aristotle's rhetorical theory. The three primary persuasive means are logos (logical appeal), pathos (emotional appeal), and ethos (ethical appeal). We examined these three methods in this paper in terms of how they are used to persuade consumers, and how they are perceived by them. In order to determine how Pakistani media utilizes Aristotle's three means of persuasion in television advertisements, researchers studied beauty advertisements in Pakistani media for three months. There is a great deal of emphasis placed on persuasion in Pakistani advertising. Although Aristotle's rhetoric theory was presented over 2000 years ago, it has proven to be highly effective in persuasion today.

Pragmatic Value of Hedging in British Political Discourse

Hedging is part and parcel of any discourse (either oral or written). It’s worth mentioning that the functions of hedges are not totally agreed on by the scholars. However, they all admit the multifunctional nature of this phenomenon and its dependence on the context. Mostly hedges imply lack of commitment, indicate politeness (negative and positive), fuzziness, lack of certainty, protecting one’s ego. Despite the extensive research carried out in this area, there are not so many studies that address the issue of hedging in political discourse. The aim of the present study is to analyse pragmatic value of hedging as a means of persuasion and manipulation. Main focus is given to prosodic features and their strategic role in hedging. The material comprises speeches of British politicians at conferences, press conferences, in British Parliament and political debates. The observations made in the paper proved that prosodic means (either in complex with other verbal means or in isolation) contribute to pragmatic effect of hedging in political discourse as a valuable tool to persuade people, to shape their opinion, to mark “us vs them” opposition, protect one’s ego and lack of personal involvement.

Persuasive communication systems: a machine learning approach to predict the effect of linguistic styles and persuasion techniques

PurposePrediction is a critical task in targeted online advertising, where predictions better than random guessing can translate to real economic return. This study aims to use machine learning (ML) methods to identify individuals who respond well to certain linguistic styles/persuasion techniques based on Aristotle’s means of persuasion, rhetorical devices, cognitive theories and Cialdini’s principles, given their psychometric profile.Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,022 individuals took part in the survey; participants were asked to fill out the ten item personality measure questionnaire to capture personality traits and the dysfunctional attitude scale (DAS) to measure dysfunctional beliefs and cognitive vulnerabilities. ML classification models using participant profiling information as input were developed to predict the extent to which an individual was influenced by statements that contained different linguistic styles/persuasion techniques. Several ML algorithms were used including support vector machine, LightGBM and Auto-Sklearn to predict the effect of each technique given each individual’s profile (personality, belief system and demographic data).FindingsThe findings highlight the importance of incorporating emotion-based variables as model input in predicting the influence of textual statements with embedded persuasion techniques. Across all investigated models, the influence effect could be predicted with an accuracy ranging 53%–70%, indicating the importance of testing multiple ML algorithms in the development of a persuasive communication (PC) system. The classification ability of models was highest when predicting the response to statements using rhetorical devices and flattery persuasion techniques. Contrastingly, techniques such as authority or social proof were less predictable. Adding DAS scale features improved model performance, suggesting they may be important in modelling persuasion.Research limitations/implicationsIn this study, the survey was limited to English-speaking countries and largely Western society values. More work is needed to ascertain the efficacy of models for other populations, cultures and languages. Most PC efforts are targeted at groups such as users, clients, shoppers and voters with this study in the communication context of education – further research is required to explore the capability of predictive ML models in other contexts. Finally, long self-reported psychological questionnaires may not be suitable for real-world deployment and could be subject to bias, thus a simpler method needs to be devised to gather user profile data such as using a subset of the most predictive features.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study indicate that leveraging richer profiling data in conjunction with ML approaches may assist in the development of enhanced persuasive systems. There are many applications such as online apps, digital advertising, recommendation systems, chatbots and e-commerce platforms which can benefit from integrating persuasion communication systems that tailor messaging to the individual – potentially translating into higher economic returns.Originality/valueThis study integrates sets of features that have heretofore not been used together in developing ML-based predictive models of PC. DAS scale data, which relate to dysfunctional beliefs and cognitive vulnerabilities, were assessed for their importance in identifying effective persuasion techniques. Additionally, the work compares a range of persuasion techniques that thus far have only been studied separately. This study also demonstrates the application of various ML methods in predicting the influence of linguistic styles/persuasion techniques within textual statements and show that a robust methodology comparing a range of ML algorithms is important in the discovery of a performant model.

Fear Message and Adoption of Barrier Measures: A Study of COVID 19 in the Cameroonian Population

Fear appeals have long been a means of persuasion to promote favorable health behaviors. In the case of COVID-19 in particular, the mere presence of this epidemic seems to have the psychological consequence of fear in many individuals. Resorting to fear appeals becomes an adjunct in the fight against this disease, which is characterized by uncertainty despite the vaccine proposals that litter the horizon. The purpose of this paper is to examine the variables that may promote the adoption of barrier measures related to COVID-19. To accomplish this, the researchers have conducted an online survey and processed the resulting data via SPSS.21 and Amos software. The results have shown that perceived efficacy, self-efficacy, and fear messages based on cultural practices are relevant for promoting the adoption of recommendations against COVID-19. In contrast, repeated fear messages and government statistics are not found to be very effective. On this basis, it is to be recommended that persuasive communication actors focus on fear messages in relation to the cultural aspects to which the population is much more attached. They should amplify communication about compliance with anti-Covid-19 barrier measures.

Aristotelian Time, Ethics, and the Art of Persuasion in Shakespeare’s Henry V

In his response to the Dauphin, his threats before Harfleur’s walls, and his St. Crispin’s Day oration, Henry V deploys what we might call proleptic histories of the present as a means of rhetorical persuasion. Henry invites his audiences, that is, to imagine themselves in the future, understanding the present as part of their own history. Henry’s invocation of an imagined future that understands the present as a theoretical past betrays a surprising indebtedness to Aristotle’s notion of time as “a measure of change with respect to the before and after.” Drawing on Aristotle’s theory that time depends upon a perceiving mind and that those unconscious of change mistakenly “join up the latter ‘now’ to the former and make it one,” this essay argues that Henry succeeds in altering his auditors’ behavior, and thus generating the history he desires, by merging their shared, lived present with his own fictive temporalities. A mode of persuasion famous in its ethical ambivalence, Henry’s rhetoric reveals how the very ontological assumptions governing perceptions of time may be manipulated, for good or ill, amid audiences who fail to critically envisage their own counterbalancing, imaginative histories.

Methodology of Russian soft and hard power impact in Estonia.

ObjectivesSoft power elements can be the so-called persuasive means of political influence (culture, propaganda, diplomacy). The Russian Federation, with its historical legacy, by some historians referred to as the "siege complex", still seems to prefer changes in the distribution of power at the global level, while being aware of the benefits of cooperation with the wider West. Nevertheless, the position regarding some former USSR Republics, which it would most likely see directly in its sphere of influence, seems to remain the same, hence the actions taken and the methodology of conduct have their own characteristic features.MethodsIn accordance reference to the typology established by Nye - the methodology of the so-called hard influence generally implies the use of military means, compulsory diplomacy and economic sanctions to influence on the behavior or interests of other political bodies (Wilson, 2008, p. 114).ResultsRussia seems to use the hard combination in its own specific way and soft impact. However, the soft impact is primarily based on propaganda activities implementing the clear strategy of the Federation. As argued by Alexander et al. (2005, p. 31): "the theory of the image at the international level shows a clear relationship between the image of another nation and the choice of a strategic policy towards that nation."ConclusionsIn this sense, Russia will apply a shifting strategy in line with the old Latin principle: divide et impera. For this purpose, it will use a combination of soft and hard impact depending on Estonia's internal and international situation.

Indonesian Beauty Vloggers’ Use of English and Its Influence towards its Viewers’ Purchase Intention

Vlog or video blog is now booming along with the existence of YouTube. In Indonesia, YouTube is a third rank of most visiting website in Indonesia (https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/ID). This social media platform is advantageously employed to filming the actions which are easily accessed by public and it offers free video hosting which means vloggers may post unlimited videos without paying web hosting fees. Some vloggers perform videos for fun while others display for revenue generating through advertisements. Westenberg (cited in Subramani & Rajagopalan, 2003:302) mentions that YouTubers are influential in encouraging trial and adoption of new products and services. In line with Westenberg’s idea, Edward (2011:11) adds that “interactive advertising can be targeted in more sophisticated ways than print ads, we must recognize that power of social media as means of persuasion is far beyond that of another vehicle in which to serve advertising.” These two complementary propositions interest the researchers to conduct a deeper investigation about some vlogs on YouTube with the other variable of parameter, English use. The use of English gives efficacious consequence on advertisements. Biswal (2009:32) strongly mentioned that the use of two languages attracts consumers. Thus, capturing the four Indonesian beauty vloggers, assorted by the two who frequently insert some English codes and the other two who rarely interpolate them, as the object of research, this current investigation examines its use and influence towards viewers’ purchase intention. Questionnaire as helpful instrument is going to be delivered to viewers to see their purchase intention based on the indicators proposed by Schiffman and Kanuk (2009). The result shows that English codes do not significantly influence the viewers’ purchase intention. Viewers prefer beauty vlogs which are variously performed (not monotonous), humorously presented, and politely language-used. Besides, the content of the vlogs should be novel and honest.

Rhetorical analysis of two motivational speeches in Croatia

The paper examines two motivational speeches delivered by presidential candidates Zoran Milanović and Kolinda Grabar Kitarović during the 2019 presidential election campaign in Croatia. The emphasis is on the use of rhetorical operations and ideology-related vocabulary as a means of persuasion, as motivational speech aims to persuade an audience. The research begins by asking two research questions: RQ1) What principles of strategic communication do presidential candidates use to persuade audience to take a desired course of action? and RQ2) What incentive elements and rhetorical devices are used by each speaker to address the public? To answer the questions, two models of political discourse analysis are used: the persuasion and the lexical-argumentative model. The analysis is based on three hypotheses: H1) Motivational speech, as part of epideictic rhetoric, implements elements of persuasion, direction, intensity and persistence and involves not only linguistic, but also personal and psychological factors, H2) The characteristic structure of elements of incitement includes the use of positively and negatively charged words and phrases to reinforce the feeling of (non-)belonging to a group, and H3) Possible differences between motivational speeches are not gender specific, as both motivational speakers are career politicians with different political affiliations. Within the framework of two models of analysis, 20 excerpts representing 134 speech utterances are selected from each speech. The results show that (i) both motivational speakers use a variety of persuasive tools to attack the opponent(s), introduce electoral policies, legitimize their political positions, or define the ideological groups of belonging and (ii) there are both similarities and differences in the rhetorical design of the speeches analyzed, uncovering various patterns of judgment about political reality.

Cartoons in the Genre Spectrum of Political Discourse

The article examines cartoons as an effective means of political influence aimed at changing the emotional state and behaviour of the addressee, restructuring certain elements of their ideology, modifying the value hierarchy, and forming extralinguistic activity motives. The research theoretically substantiates the cartoons' multimodal nature, as their verbal and non-verbal components form a single visual, structural, semantic, and functional whole aiming at a complex pragmatic impact on the recipient. This article emphasizes that a cartoon not only appeals to the mind and aesthetic beliefs of a person but also the sense of humour, thus creating a comic effect often in the form of sharp, caustic satire.Having analyzed various examples from American and British media the research proves that political cartoons have a wide range of techniques and means for creating a comic effect, namely, irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, metaphor, and symbols. Individually or together, these techniques and means add a special colour to the cartoon, reveal the author's dissatisfaction with political realities, and enhance the emotional impact on the addressee.Having the ability to encourage the audience to abandon the automatic perception of reality and look at certain political decisions, events, or facts from an unexpected angle, political cartoons serve as an effective means of manipulation and persuasion.

The power of language to influence people: Mary Kay Ash the entrepreneur

PurposeAs a business executive and philanthropist, Mary Kay Ash is legendary as a glass-ceiling breaker. With the belief that Mary Kay Ash is both modern and relevant, while simultaneously legendary, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Mary Kay Ash as an influential entrepreneur. This research responds to the call by Cogliser and Brigham (2004) for an increased understanding of how entrepreneurial leaders influence, challenge, inspire and develop followers.Design/methodology/approachFollowing on research by Hoppe (2013), this objective was accomplished via a pentadic analysis of Mary Kay Ash’s rhetoric aimed to influence the mental mindset of readers (followers) over the course of generations. Burke’s pentad was the sense-making tool used for examining Ash’s rhetoric of influence as an entrepreneurial leader. The data used in the pentadic analysis were also analyzed via Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and IBM Watson Emotion Analysis to see where analyses might converge or diverge.FindingsBased on the analysis of her written work, Mary Kay Ash resided at the intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship and, in so doing, was an influencer. Her primary rhetorical approach to influencing was idealism. Interwoven in her writings, she also exhibited both pragmatism and realism. She knew that she had to start the business to have the future she desired and that she needed to train her team appropriately for success to be forthcoming. The motivation in Mary Kay Ash’s rhetoric was that of influencing people so they would be the best that they could be.Research limitations/implicationsQualitative research brings with it an array of inevitable research problems. Pentadic analysis cannot be judged by the basic objective standards of reliability and validity because objective reality does not exist in personal interpretation. That is, one person as a critic cannot be impartial because the interpretation is only one personal way of viewing the data and another critic might view the same pentads and come up with different ratios. With this subjectivity in mind, however, the data used in the pentadic analysis were also analyzed via LIWC and IBM Watson Emotion Analysis to see where analyses might converge or diverge.Practical implicationsThe findings from this research denote clearly that Mary Kay Ash was a forerunner of the modern day influencer. As a primogenitor of the influencer marketing phenomenon, Mary Kay Ash’s entrepreneurial legacy is expected to continue through generations of followers. This finding speaks to the importance of today’s entrepreneurs using the spoken and written word to influence others and create a lasting organizational legacy.Originality/valueCountless scholars have used pentadic analysis, with a variety of artifacts, to examine the motives behind the rhetoric. However, rhetoric as a means of persuasion and influence has received little attention within the context of the written works by management gurus (Jones et al., 2009), and, aside from the exploration by Berglund and Wigren (2012), the narrative of entrepreneurial influence has not benefitted from close examination.

How to identify an argument type? On the hermeneutics of persuasive discourse

This paper proposes a theory of interpreting argument types as an integral part of a systematic and comprehensive ‘hermeneutics of persuasive discourse’. It first explains how such a hermeneutics can be developed based on pragmatic insights about the use of language for persuasive purposes expressed in the philosophy of argument. Then, after having provided an overview of the main hermeneutical stages involved in interpreting persuasive discourse, the paper focuses on the stage of argument type identification. It formulates a ‘hermeneutics of argument type’ in terms of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA), an argument categorization framework systematizing existing accounts of arguments in the broad sense of the term (topoi, loci, argument schemes, fallacies, means of persuasion). For each of the three parameters within this framework, ‘argument form’, ‘argument substance’, and ‘argument lever’, the paper describes how to determine their value by analyzing several examples of natural arguments.

Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People

Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People

Promoting HIV/AIDS Prevention through Soap Operas

In the past three decades television soap operas have been used as a means of healtheducation and persuasion. In recent years, the proliferation of entertainment televisionworldwide has made the soap opera a powerful source of educational and social messages.One of the most critical global health issues of today is the need to reduce HIV/AIDSinfection, particularly on the continent of Africa. In the 1990s, the country of Tanzaniabroadcast a highly effective radio soap opera to promote HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2000,Tanzania again employed the use of the soap opera to address HIV/AIDS as well as othersocial issues, this time through television. Our research indicates that the Tanzaniantelevision soap opera employed in this effort, Maisha, effectively promoted HIV/AIDSprevention among television viewers. In particular, those who were more involved withMashaka, the star of Maisha, were more powerfully influenced by the health messagescommunicated through the programme. The implications of this research for usingentertainment for HIV/AIDS prevention are discussed

Comparison as a means of persuasion and a technique of manipulation: features of application in media space

Manipulative techniques of verbal communication have rather recently moved into the focus of research attention (classical rhetoric was focused on honest argumentation and touched upon the problem of manipulation only in terms of criticism of “unsuitable persuasion techniques” used by sophists). In numerous modern studies, virtually the entire tropic is considered to be manipulative techniques, and it remains unclear what transforms the method of enhancing figurativeness and expressiveness into a destructive method of latent influence. Of course, this ambiguity is generated by the essence of the object: to explain manipulativeness, it is necessary to dive into the spheres of the intentional, which is difficult to verify. However, it is extremely important to distinguish between the tropics in its original role, on the one hand, and tropics used for manipulative purposes, on the other. Based on discursive analysis, which makes it possible to identify manipulation, using the inductive-deductive method and the method of linguopragmatic analysis, the authors study the conditions under which the use of linguistic means in general and the comparison trope in particular becomes manipulative. On the example of the trope comparison the authors attempt to clarify the conditions of its incorrect, it means manipulative, use. Manipulation is destructive, even if it bases on the tropics, and therefore for the cultivation of public space it is necessary to detect this technique.

Digital Communication and Multimodal Features: Functioning of Emoji in Interpersonal Communication

Technical advances and digital means of communication have led to the development of digital semiotics which is characterised by its multimodality and abounds in paralinguistic elements such as emojis, emoticons, memes, etc. These extralinguistic elements serve as a compensatory mechanism in the new communication means. The increasing interest of users in various iconic signs and symbols generates the research interest in different fields of knowledge. The study aims to consider cognitive, semiotic and psycholinguistic features of emojis in interpersonal communication through analysing their functions in text messages and in social network messages. An attempt to reveal their persuasive mechanism is made. The research is based on a large scale dataset comprised of the private text messages as well as public posts on social networks which include verbal and nonverbal / iconic elements. The research data presents a multilingual bank of English, Russian and French sources. The research methods include context analysis, linguistic and pragmatic analysis and content analysis. The findings show that emojis in private interpersonal communication perform a number of functions, namely nonverbal, emotive, pragmatic, punctuation, substitutional, decorative and rhetorical functions. These iconic symbols incorporated in the interpersonal digital communication present a compensatory mechanism and the means of persuasion of a message addressee / recipient. The combination of verbal and iconic elements triggers a double focusing mechanism, and the perception is shaped by all cognitive mechanisms including rational and emotional, unconscious components.