Rhetorical Effects Research Articles

Bridging the Past, or Breaking From It? Leader Continuity Rhetoric and Nontarget Employee Diversity Initiative Support

Organizations launch diversity initiatives to promote diversity within their ranks, improve the work experiences of underrepresented groups, and satisfy growing demands for diversity in workplace settings. While typically welcomed by the target group, diversity initiatives can be compromised when employees who are not the initiative’s targets—for example, men in the case of gender diversity initiatives—withhold their support. Particularly organizations that are mostly composed of nontargets may thus struggle with a lack of support for their diversity initiatives. To understand how organizations can successfully implement diversity initiatives while preserving nontarget support, we take an uncertainty management perspective and examine the interactive effects of diversity practice type (identity-conscious vs. identity-blind) and leader continuity rhetoric (high vs. low vision of continuity) on nontarget support. In Study 1, using data from a 2 × 2 between-person field experiment in a firefighter organization, we find that framing the initiative under a vision of high (vs. low) continuity preserves nontargets’ anticipatory distributive justice in the face of identity-conscious (vs. identity-blind) practices and thereby promotes initiative support. Study 2, a vignette experiment, replicates our findings and shows that other justice dimensions above and beyond distributive justice appear secondary in this context. Our work has important implications for managing the initiation phase of diversity initiatives in organizations primarily composed of nontargets in a way that fosters nontargets’ perceived justice and support.

Hansard as Literary Reception: The Uses of Poetry in Australian Political Debate, 1901–1950

ABSTRACT Hansard—Australia’s record of parliamentary debate—might seem an unlikely site for literary analysis. It is, however, a publisher of original poetry and its criticism a forum for the performance and citation of poetry, and a complex archive of literary reception in Australia since Federation. In this paper, we discuss our findings in relation to the uses of poetry in the Australian Hansard from 1901 to 1950, focusing on how the work of two settler Australian poet-parliamentarians, J. K. McDougall and John Cash Neild, is put to use in parliamentary speeches as recorded in Hansard. Together, these examples indicate that poetry is not only deployed for a range of heightened rhetorical effects on the floor of parliament; it is also part of the fabric of routine political debate, put to a range of adversarial and racist purposes, and part of the wider history of literary publication and reception.

Political persuasion in international affairs: A computational sociolinguistic inquiry utilizing historical analysis of US Congressional rhetoric from 1873 to 2017

Negative sentiment, when used in the context of persuasion, can play a significant role in the effectiveness of spoken rhetoric. In this paper, sentiment analysis of publicly delivered Congressional speeches on relevant foreign policy legislation and events will be the center of exploration, evaluated through historical trends of that corresponding period. This evaluation element will be key in determining whether or not negative sentiments were successful and how overall sentiment in a speech evolved over one hundred and fifty years through computational sociolinguistic analysis. The paper explores the increase in negative sentiment by drastic global events, illustrating how negative sentiment became a necessity for significant foreign policy action.

A Manual Training Method as Literate Practice: Rhetorics of the Sloyd Training School for Teachers, 1904-1914

The Sloyd Training School, an early twentieth-century private school for teachers in Boston, attempted to legitimize the Sloyd method of handiwork. Specifically, its Alumni Association’s publication Sloyd Record brought together educators across the country to make a case for Sloyd’s relevancy and impact on the academic and professional development of students, particularly students who were working poor or receiving educations in non-traditional settings. Its contributors painted Sloyd as a form of knowledge and a resource, as a literacy, and their rhetorical effectiveness was predicated upon Sloyd’s ability to be painted as such in its far-reaching effects and comprehensiveness.

This proposal is racist: the (muted) consequences of invoking racism in policy arguments

ABSTRACT Using an original vignette survey experiment, we explore how white Americans’ evaluations of policy arguments in the local context change depending on the rhetoric used to criticize the policy. We compare the effects of three rhetorical frames used by critics of a policy: inefficiency, unfairness, and racism. We find that respondents use political rhetoric as a strong ideological cue: criticisms that invoke both unfairness and racism make respondents perceive policy critics as more liberal and policy supporters as more conservative. The effects of rhetoric on criticism evaluations are moderated by partisanship: Democrats find criticism about unfairness and racism more persuasive, while for Republicans the effect is opposite. We are unable to establish reliable effects of rhetorical framing on the respondents’ support for the policy itself or their readiness to engage in local political action.

Hyping the Hypothetical: Talk and Temporality in US Supreme Court Oral Arguments

The US Supreme Court conducts much of its business through talk, including during oral arguments, where a central activity is the consideration of hypotheticals posed by justices. Using conversation analysis, I examine a key segment of the oral arguments for Citizens United v. FEC, one that arguably changed the course of campaign finance history. I identify the conversational devices employed to advance and contest one particular hypothetical, involving an imagined ban on books, subject to a speech-exchange system that differentially empowers justices to dictate both the terms of the discussion and the time afforded the advocate to respond to any particular question. The article offers the first disciplined qualitative analysis of interaction during oral arguments, illustrates the place of temporality in legal reasoning and argumentation, and makes several contributions to conversation analysis: it advances the study of institutional talk to a new legal setting, identifies some ways in which the machinery of talk can be harnessed for rhetorical effect, and demonstrates the analytical utility of prior knowledge of what a participant arrives to an encounter equipped to say.

Pinpointing Linguistic Emphasis in Classical Greek

Abstract Emphasis is a ubiquitous notion in classical scholarship, but its vagueness has repeatedly been criticized (and its usefulness, consequently, questioned) by Greek linguists. This brief study seeks to identify (and secure) a place for this notion in the analytical toolbox for the description of Classical Greek by applying the strict but nuanced definition of emphasis in Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008) to the identification and classification of linguistic devices in the ancient language. In particular, this study argues for a distinction between emphasis as a rhetorical effect and emphasis as a communicative intention. In the former understanding, emphasis may be produced secondarily by a number of linguistic and rhetorical devices. Conversely, linguistic emphasis stricto sensu would only be conveyed by linguistic devices used primarily to intensify linguistic entities of any level (discourse acts, propositional contents, subacts).

Nali in the conflict of dualism of words and meaning

Literature, as a aspect of human life and knowledge, has long turned to rhetoric and has not been able to speak without it, even as literature is often defined as a kind of expression that has a high rhetoric and is separated from people's normal speech because of this rhetoric. The writer or poet has always relied on the rhetorical arts that were common in their time, often measured and evaluated between the two products in the same era because of the rhetorical art that writers used in their texts. It seems that Kurdish literature, as one of the eastern literature, has had a great influence on Arabic rhetoric in two directions: the first is Arabic rhetoric through persians, meaning kurds, just as they have received other classical things from Persia, have demanded their rhetoric. Secondly, it was taken directly through the Arabs, and this direction had less effect, Rather, most Kurdish poets fall under the umbrella of the first direction, which does not mean that kurds have been unaware of the problems and conflicts between Arab speakers, on the contrary, Kurdish poets and writers have had a lot of information in this regard, and one of these poets is Mullah Khidir (Nali). The benefits and benefits of such research are that for the first time, such a subject should be discussed in a practical way and the extent of the negative effect of Arabic rhetoric should be expressed. Key words: (words, meanings, , jahz, gurgani, rhetoric).

Defining media speech effectiveness: A case of Ukrainian president Zelenskyy's addresses to national parliaments

The paper argues that effectiveness of media speeches, i.e., their ability to influence the addressees, largely rests on national prototypes, representing cultural entities and historic events. The national prototypes are clear and accessible, resonating with the addressees' values, attitudes, and beliefs. The article analyzes rhetorical effectiveness of Ukrainian president's addresses delivered at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian full-scale war to parliaments of seven states: Poland, USA, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and Greece. Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeals to the target audiences' national prototypes representing events or cultural entities correlating with Ukraine's current plight. It is found that with respect to the similarity to the national prototypes of other countries the arguments employed in Zelenskyy’s speeches fall into three types: direct, implicit, and gradual. The most effective is direct reference to prototypes at the global or national levels of the listeners' worldviews. Less effective are implicit arguments left for the addressee to be inferred like any other implicature. The least effective are gradual arguments based on presuppositions about some commonly shared information: they modify the existing national prototypes with reference to the present or future which is not always accepted by the audience.

Right-Wing Populist Leaders, Nationalist Rhetoric, and Dispute Initiation in International Politics

The global rise of right-wing populist (RWP) leaders has raised concerns about the threat they pose to a cooperative international order, but there is little systematic evidence linking RWP leaders to military aggression. Are RWP leaders more prone to initiating international disputes? If so, when and why? We argue that a RWP leader’s hyper-nationalist rhetoric can galvanize popular support for militant internationalism, but this only leads to pressures for the leader to follow through on their belligerent rhetoric by initiating international disputes in participatory democracies. Using survey experiments fielded in India and Japan, we find strong support for our claims about the effects of RWP rhetoric on civilian attitudes. Statistical results from original data on populist leaders worldwide (1886-2014) then show that RWP leaders in participatory democracies are more likely to initiate militarized disputes. Our results are troubling given the recent increase in RWP leaders elected in participatory democracies.

‘They will not survive here’

Abstract To justify the hardening of borders the populist radical right sometimes uses environmental rhetoric to frame migrants as a threat. The radical right’s environmental politics has been analysed through a focus on state borders, but less attention has been paid to the (re)production of bordering within and beyond the nation-state and to the racialising effects of such rhetoric, in other words how racial differences and hierarchies are (re)produced and justified through language on nature. Drawing on geographical literature on bordering and nationalism and postcolonial theory, this article investigates the semantic structures that convey the racist messaging. The article argues that the ‘racialized Other’ is bordered from the ’green’ homeland and Western space by utilising determinist conceptions of nature, through animalistic and environmental disaster metaphors, and by mobilising an idea of the environmentally conscious Finn as the opposite of the littering migrant.

Wordiness in academic writing: a systematic scoping review

Background: Excessive use of empty words in academic texts is a significant impediment to effective communication, often complicating the clarity and reducing the comprehensibility of scholarly writing. Purpose: This systematic scoping review investigates the nature, causes, and consequences of excessive use of empty words, alongside strategies for mitigating this issue in academic writing, differentiating between the nuanced connotations of ‘verbosity’ and ‘wordiness’. Methods: Employing a detailed search strategy, the review engaged two electronic databases – Scopus and Google Scholar, initially identifying 256 studies. Employing the PRISMA-ScR protocol and the ‘PCC’ mnemonic (Population, Context, Concept) for inclusion and exclusion criteria, 30 English-language studies directly addressing the excessive use of empty words and strategies for reduction were included. Results: The synthesis of the selected research revealed that while the excessive use of empty words is widely recognized as a challenge for authors and academics, the problem remains underexplored. The analysis clarified the distinction between ‘verbosity’ and ‘wordiness’– terms often used interchangeably but with distinct implications for academic writing. Key factors contributing to this issue include complex sentence structures, unnecessary nominalizations, and the use of redundant phrases or overly complex vocabulary. Effective strategies for reducing excessive wordiness involve simplifying sentence constructions, employing more direct language, eliminating redundancy, and strategically using verbosity for positive rhetorical effects. Conclusion: The review emphasises the importance of awareness and strategic management of empty word usage in academic texts to enhance readability and engagement. By adopting a critical approach to the elimination of unnecessary verbiage, authors can significantly improve the quality of academic writing.

Analyzing High School Students’ Mulitmodal Compositions with Digital Media Platforms Using Metafunctions

This study explores how diverse high school English students designed open-ended, multimodal projects across digital platforms (Weebly, blogs, and Instagram). Framed by metafunctions, emergent and axial coding of each student’s website homepage shows a broad range of how they designed in digital spaces and to what rhetorical effects. Additional coding of two focal students’ designs across each of the digital platforms highlights how students created complex, multimodal compositions that would have otherwise not been possible with the typical more formal, rigid forms of discourse. By designing multimodally, students showcased interests, humor, emotions, and culture not often seen in this classroom

Donald Trump's tweets, political value judgment, and the Renminbi exchange rate

This study examines the correlation between former U.S. President Donald Trump's China-related tweets and the daily return and conditional volatility of onshore (CNY) and offshore (CNH) Renminbi exchange rates. Using sentiment analysis techniques to quantify political value judgment, we find that Trump's sentiment towards China has a significantly negative relationship with the CNH value but no significant linkage with the CNY price. During the trade tension period, both markets' conditional volatility responded to the tweets, with the CNH daily return displaying a heightened reaction to the sentiment. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering market conditions when analyzing the effects of political rhetoric on different segments of the Renminbi exchange rate market.

Islamic Crowdfunding and Social Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Organizational Orientation Rhetoric on Crowdfunding Success

Crowdfunding campaign narratives function as signalling tools for social entrepreneurs, conveying organisational values to potential backers. In this study, we analyse 18,420 campaigns from 128 countries on the Islamic donation-based crowdfunding platform, Launchgood (2013–2020) through signalling theory. Our findings show that rhetoric emphasising altruistic, stakeholder and market orientations significantly influences Islamic crowdfunding success. These effects vary based on a country’s level of economic freedom, being more pronounced in nations with better government integrity, financial freedom and judicial effectiveness and diminished in those with higher government intervention. These insights guide entrepreneurs in strategically promoting projects through effective signalling rhetoric.

Politics metaphor in British and Bosnian-Herzegovinian migration discourse

As the geopolitical situation changes, it is necessary to discuss how politics is structured by metaphor in the context of recent social phenomena, such as the European migrant crisis. This paper analyses the conceptual metaphors politics as war, politics as a game, politics as a trade, and politics as a theater in British and Bosnian-Herzegovinian newspapers. The goal of this study is to establish to what extent and in which situations journalists resort to figurative language to persuade the recipients to view politics in a desired way. The paper aims to reflect on the use of deliberate metaphor as a perspective-changing device by journalists striving to achieve their rhetorical goals and influence recipients’ perception of the political situation. The corpus comprises 174 British and 307 Bosnian-Herzegovinian articles collected from August 2015 to March 2016 (247,912 words). Relying on Steen et al.’s (2010) model of metaphor analysis, the paper investigates the types of metaphor in the corpus, the deliberate use of politics metaphors and their communicative function in migration discourse - discussing both the rhetorical goals of journalists and the rhetorical effects on recipients. It has been established that the analyzed set of metaphors has a divertive and persuasive function in migration discourse. Similar studies are encouraged to shed light on how deliberate metaphors related to politics may have diverging communicative functions in other types of discourse.

Genre Analysis of Minutes of Academic Meetings

Genre analysis has received much attention in the recent few decades, in which different genres have been analyzed for their rhetorical features for academic and pedagogical purposes. One genre that has received very little attention in Ghanaian scholarship is meeting minutes. Meeting minutes are a cross-disciplinary genre and play crucial roles in organizations such as academic institutions, including serving as official records of all formal meeting proceedings and resolutions. From the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) tradition, this study explores the communicative events described in minutes of meetings. Using Swales' (1990) moves and steps genre analysis framework, a corpus of twenty-four minutes of meetings was collected from Sunyani Technical University and analyzed for their rhetorical structures as well as grammatical features that characterize these rhetorical events. The results show that the communicative events of the minutes are composed of a six-move structure: heading (Move 1), auxiliary information (Move 2), opening (Move 3), reference to previous minutes (Move 4), the content of the meeting (Move 5), and closing (Move 6). The prominent grammatical features that characterize these moves are tense (89.3% past and 10.7% present), voice (67.9% active and 32.1% passive), and sentence structure (48.8% simple, 29.8% complex, and 21.4% compound). These results have implications for the existing scholarship on meeting minutes, professional development (i.e. developing courses for secretarial students), and further research. It is expected that the knowledge of moves and grammatical features can help the students and novice secretaries practice writing minutes of meetings effectively.

Withdrawal of A Decent Man: On the Irony in “Running for Governor”

Mark Twain’s short story “Running for Governor” is threaded with irony, which achieves a structural effect and contributed a lot to the organization of the story on the macro-level, and achieves a strong rhetorical effect with artful linguistic devices on the micro-level, therefore forming a sharp contrast between truth and falsehood. Irony in the story is effectively penetrating and powerful in its function of plot development, characterization and the demonstration of authorial attitude. This paper aims to reveal how the artistic effect of irony is achieved in this story, and show that the artistry of Mark Twain’s irony lies in creating the tension between ambivalent feelings through which there comes a direct communication between the author and reader through the ingenious organization and masterful use of language.

“Hey, You There!”: Theorizing the Open Letter as Methodology in Academic Writing

From James Baldwin's (1962) “A Letter to My Nephew,” which laid bare the brutalities of being black in 1960s America, to Chanelle Miller’s published victim impact statement addressed to her assailant, which provided vocabulary and was kindle for #MeToo, examples abound demonstrating the ways in which the open letter continuously surfaces during pivotal historical junctures. Although the contextual significance of this format of authorship is widely used in scholarly disciplines ranging from education to history, the structural significance of the open letter as a methodologic approach to academic writing has yet to be theorized, leaving questions that merit attention: Why is the open letter so often used by marginalized groups? What are the literary and rhetorical effects of the enclosed addressed between sender and receiver? Finally, how does this format of writing create and affect the positionality and subjectivity of authors? By writing a letter addressed to Academia/School, this essay makes the case for the open letter as something to be studied but also a methodology and study in and of itself. By drawing on literary theory, cultural studies, and research on writing in academia, this essay suggests that the open letter is an important form of authorship and argues for revisiting the open letter as a legitimate form of scholarship as well as an authentic form of academic writing in education.

Copernicus’ Rhetoric: Arguments for Heliocentrism in the Early 16th Century

It is commonly acknowledged that Copernicus and his publications were pivotal in initiating the scientific revolution, an era marked by continuous innovation and revolutionary ideas in science and natural philosophy. However, Copernicus also brought forward another revolution, using rhetoric in science as a powerful tool to persuade a skeptical public. Both natural sciences and philosophy have prided themselves on a rigorous and objective approach to acquiring knowledge about nature. This ideal scientific method has been a cornerstone of scientific inquiry for centuries. However, ironically, scientific publications are considered literature and contain distinctive rhetoric that persuades readers beyond logical reasoning and experimentation. Two of Copernicus’ works, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium) and Little Commentary (Commentariolus), are distinguished examples of such a phenomenon. By investigating the application and effect of rhetoric in Copernicus’ works, one can gain insights into the persuasive aspects of scientific communication while highlighting the sociocultural obstacles Copernicus faced during his time.