Rhetorical Function Research Articles

When Gestures also Argue: Multimodal Viewpoint Shift as a Rhetorical Strategy in American Political Talk Shows

Drawing on Mental Spaces Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory in Cognitive Linguistics, we examine the interaction between speech and co-speech gestures in The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Statistical analysis shows that viewpoint shift in the self-built multimodal corpus, generally following the pattern: Base Space->News Narrative Space(->Base space)->Source Viewpoint Space(+)(->Base space), is significantly related to the use of verbal markers and gestural types. Moreover, multimodal viewpoint shift in political talk shows can achieve such rhetorical functions as enhancing ironic effects, solidifying and highlighting opposing positions, and simplifying political issues. Since verbal markers and gestures can mobilize the audience’s embodied experience by primarily activating mental images and motor programs, we claim that mental simulation and perspective taking play a pivotal role in the cognitive processing of multimodal viewpoint shifts by promoting viewpoint alignment between the audience and the host.

Developing advanced citation skills: A mixed-methods approach to corpus technology training for novice researchers

In contrast with most existing corpus technology (CT) studies which focus primarily on general vocabulary and grammar learning, this study investigates the effectiveness of CT in addressing challenges encountered by novice researchers in improving an advanced linguistic skill in EAP writing: using reporting verbs to express rhetorical functions in citations in literature reviews. An eight-week CT training programme featuring a practical framework of the rhetorical functions of citations and utilising the Parallel EAP Corpora was implemented for 50 Chinese postgraduate students who were L2 English users. A mixed-methods approach was adopted. Paired-samples t-tests demonstrated statistically significant improvement with medium effect sizes in the frequency and diversity of reporting verb usage in citations, as well as in the complexity of expressing rhetorical functions of citations. These findings were further corroborated by corpus-aided descriptive statistical and textual analyses. Questionnaire data and interviews further revealed students' positive evaluations towards the training informed by the Parallel EAP Corpora, which facilitated participants' learning in various ways. These findings hold substantial value for EAP pedagogy, indicating that the incorporation of pedagogically sound CT training can significantly improve novice researchers’ development of academic discourse through nuanced citation practices and advanced rhetorical strategies for composing literature reviews.

Toward a rhetorical understanding of Chinese political internet memes amid a Chinese governance crisis

ABSTRACT The global trend of social media communication renders internet memes increasingly popular as democratic-oriented discursive tools in online ideological contests. However, scholarly attention to the rhetorical aspects of memetic political discourse has predominantly been Western-centric, leaving their counterparts in non-Western socio-political environments, especially during times of social crises, relatively unexplored in the existing literature. To bridge this gap, this article employs a social-semiotic-rooted multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) to investigate how Chinese netizens utilize internet memes for ideological contestation during a societal-level Chinese governance crisis in the 2020s, characterized by a series of iconic ideological upheavals. The research examines 357 memes from the “My Post” community on WeChat, one of China’s prominent social apps, to unveil their symbolic processes and rhetorical functions in Chinese online politics. This empirical study reveals that Chinese political internet memes serve as strategic rhetorical devices that: (1) enable civic ideological expressions within an authoritarian media landscape dominated by standardized ideological narratives; (2) foster a dynamic process allowing negotiation among political authority, media institutions, and netizens to establish a discursive space accommodating contentious topics and acceptable compromises; and (3) signify a paradigm shift in rhetorical function, elevating internet memes from online communicative artifacts to a democratic perspective.

Rhetorical Functions of Lexical Collocations in the Inaugural Speech of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

In political communication, inaugural speeches are pivotal, signifying the start of a leader’s term and a new chapter in a nation’s history. These serve as a momentousoccasion where the leader outlines their vision, pledging to guide the country to prosperity and unity. This study delves into the inaugural speech delivered by PresidentBola Ahmed Tinubu upon assuming the highest office in Nigeria in May 2023. Through a meticulous analysis of lexical collocations, the study uncovers the underlying linguistic intricacies, thematic emphasis, and rhetorical strategies employed by President Tinubu in his address, to gain insights into the rhetorical techniques used to connect with the audience and convey his vision as well as the impact of his address on political discourse and public perception. Downloading the speech from the Punch Newspaper website, the analytical approach followed the principles of lexical collocation theory and systemic functional linguistics. The analysis reveals eight strategic rhetorical purposes in President Tinubu’s use of lexical collocations in his speech. These functions encompass appeals to religiosity, political sensibility, national pride, patriotism, unity, hope, calls to action, policy clarification, and exemplifying an inclusive government. His language choices resonate with the audience, eliciting emotions and nurturing a national sense of pride and identity. The analysis of President Tinubu’s inaugural speech contributes to a better understanding of his linguistic legacy and communication strategies during his tenure in office. It becomes a part of the historical record, revealing the president’s approach to governance and leadership.

The Fraternity of Milk: Sovereignty and Anthropotheophagy in Derrida’s Unpublished Seminar Manger l’autre (1989–1990)

Abstract In the unpublished seminars given in the United States and France between 1989–1991, Manger l’autre: Politiques de l’Amitié and Rhétoriques du Cannibalisme, Derrida analyzes the rhetorical function that the act of eating has in the Western tradition’s philosophical texts. In this paper I analyze the reading Derrida makes in those seminars of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, in order to show that they are entangled with a critique of political sovereignty. For Derrida, Augustine has a cogito of his own, which is a cogito du manger l’autre. Augustine’s formulation is “I think, eat and drink” (ego cogito, manduco et bibo), and Derrida understands it as a way of constituting both the self of the ego and the self of the community. The first form of Christian community configured through the intake of food is the fraternity of milk: infants that suck the same milk from the breast of their nurse or mother. The second configuration of the community is, of course, the sacrament of Eucharist, in which the body of the father is divided (partagé) among the brothers. I show how the analysis Derrida makes of Augustine in these seminars is a way of deconstructing the very concept of community and its relation to sovereignty. This is attempted by Derrida through the problem of jealousy: the brothers of milk will always be jealous of each other, being themselves the condition for the breaking of the community and their sovereignty. But the second form of community is also threatened by food: since the holy wafer is an edible thing and the act of incorporation of food is really an act of theophagy.

Metadiscursive Features in Interdisciplinary Lectures: Implications for EAP Notetaking

Abstract Academic lectures are among the primary resources of knowledge for higher education students, which makes notetaking a requirement during lectures. The ability to take good notes and the quality of notes taken during lectures are associated with academic achievement; therefore, notetaking instruction is an important aspect of EAP courses. To this end, the present study aims at offering a genre-based instruction framework for notetaking instruction. In accordance with this purpose, eight interdisciplinary lectures were analysed. First, rhetorical functions were identified using the framework developed by Bouziri (2020). Then, metadiscursive elements signalling the organisational structure were identified using the metadiscourse frameworks developed by Ädel (2010) and Hyland (2005). Major findings indicate a relationship between rhetorical functions and metadiscursive elements. Namely, certain metadiscourse items can signal the use of certain rhetorical functions. Thus, the GBI framework for notetaking was structured focusing on the associations that can be established between the rhetorical functions and metadiscursive elements.

One Journal, Different Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Interactive Metadiscourse in Applied Linguistics

Abstract Research articles are a primary medium for scholars to communicate with disciplinary community, but there is little evidence suggesting how much writing practices on different research subjects within a discipline diverge in a single journal. This study remedies the oversight by comparing the use of interactive metadiscourse in the papers of Applied Linguistics on language acquisition and discourse analysis. Based on a corpus of 30 research articles on each research subject, results show that writers in language acquisition make a significantly more frequent use of additive and consequential transitional markers, reformulators, and non-integral citations. However, discourse analysts prefer to invest in exemplifiers, linear and non-linear references and topic shifts. All the differences can be attributable to the characteristics of disciplinary research paradigms, which lead to different knowledge-making and interactive patterns in academic writing. The findings offer empirical evidence to the rhetorical function of metadiscourse in constructing disciplinary knowledge, and raise pedagogical implications for EAP instructors to help scholars in applied linguistics increase international publications.

“Here, We Investigate If There Is …”: A Functional Investigation of Self-Mentions in Research Article Abstracts

Abstract The present study explored authorial presence in the abstracts across three purpose-built discipline-specific corpora of RAs in major but relatively less represented disciplines in corpus studies: Civil Engineering (CE), Political Sciences (PS) and Veterinary Medicine (VM). In particular, due to less attention having been paid to these fields, we examined explicit authorial references with a functional perspective in a corpus of abstracts totaling over one million words. To this end, we first conducted a preliminary search for explicit third-person plural author references in the corpora and manually analysed a total of over 6,000 instances to check if they were all markers signaling an authorial presence in the text. Following this, the second manual analyses concentrated on categorizing the rhetorical functions of self-mentions based on Xia’s (2018) framework. The preliminary findings showed that the frequency of “we”-based authorial references in PS outweighed that in the other disciplines (PS: 722.13; CE: 636.81; VM: 481.30 per 100,000 words). Regarding the density of authorial references, we found that each discipline favored being more visible with divergent authorial roles in their abstracts. For example, PS were more rhetorically present in their abstracts by “proposing a theory or approach” whereas CE and VM authors used fewer self-mentions to mark their presence frequently with this rhetorical device. With respect to the functional analyses of the self-mentions of “we”, all three disciplines displayed more low-stakes functions such as “recount experimental procedure and methodology”. We focused on the significance of cross-disciplinary and functional analysis in the study in order to contribute to designing activities in EAP for each discipline.

Analysis of Metaphors in The Old Man and the Sea from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

There has been growing interest in investigating metaphors in literary works recently. However, most studies in the field of metaphor have only focused on its rhetorical function. However, little research has been carried out from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. This study adopts a cognitive linguistics approach to explore how conceptual metaphors function in literary works based on some analyses of the well-known novel The Old Man and the Sea from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The results show that conceptual metaphors do play a very important role which helps people comprehend literary works much better. In the point of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a kind of mapping tool and plays an important role in understanding some abstract concepts with specific things. Therefore, conceptual metaphors could definitely reveal the thinking mode of mankind to a great degree. And this study confirms the complex association between conceptual metaphors and The Old Man and the Sea. On the one hand, the findings in this study seek to understand and explain the role of metaphors in novel writing. On the other hand, it also presents a new way of appreciating literary works.

Islam Moderat sebagai Retorika Populisme Aktor Politik: Semiotika Akun @CakIminNow

This study examines the populist rhetoric of political actor, Muhaimin Iskandar, delivered on @CakIminNow during the 2024 Indonesian presidential election campaign, especially in the tweet dated October 1, 2023 regarding the Celebration of Pancasila Sanctity Day. This study uses a critical paradigm and Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis technique in analyzing nine units of analysis posted on @CakIminNow. The results of this study have revealed that the representation of moderate Islam has been utilized as a tool of populist rhetoric by Muhaimin Iskandar (Cak Imin) as one of the vice presidential candidates in the 2024 election. In addition, moderate Islam is not only seen as a system of beliefs and religious practices but also as a commodity in political marketing communication efforts by political actors. In short, this populist rhetoric functions as a strategy to strengthen the political image and garner voter support during Indonesia’s 2024 presidential election campaign.

Newspaper Editorial: Genre of Rhetorical Artifact

Newspaper editorials are considered one of the most underrated and mundane texts. While thousands of newspapers publish editorials exerting worldwide influence, it is unfortunate that they have received least scholarly attention and study. What is, therefore, baffling is that newspaper editorials are generally regarded as taken-for-granted texts and not regarded as worthy of scholarly discussion and study. Equally despairing is the approach of common readers who treat editorial texts with an all-out indifference.Against this scenario, it is vitally important to understand how editorials operate to disseminate their contents. Although newspapers have been studied from different perspectives over the centuries, there still exists a big gap in the existing literature about the study of editorial discourse from rhetorical perspectives. While addressing this gap, the paper also aims at enhancing readers' critical understanding of editorial texts and their rhetorical import.To examine this issue, the present article discusses emerging debates among communication scholars about the rhetorical functions and physical components of newspaper editorial texts.After surveying features that constitute a typical editorial text, this paper explores the approaches and paradigms that define editorials as genre of rhetorical artifacts.

Making requests at work: An examination of phrase frames in workplace email communication

As a method of business communication, emails play an essential role in establishing relationships and support systems among colleagues, partners, and sponsors to achieve business goals. Research has suggested that nonnative speakers of English and novice writers face challenges when composing professional email requests for business purposes. Previous studies have underscored the importance of phrase frames (p-frames), which are recurring multi-word sequences with a variable slot, to fulfill rhetorical functions in academic discourse. However, little research has explored how p-frames are used for written communications in business workplace contexts. This study investigated five-word p-frames used for rhetorical moves in business email requests. Using 1,148 authentic request emails extracted from the Avocado Research Email Collection corpus, we analyzed the distribution and linguistic characteristics of p-frames across five rhetorical moves. Results showed that p-frames were unevenly distributed across the rhetorical moves in business request emails. Two moves, making the inquiry and closing, showed the highest degree of formulaicity. P-frames were used in a variety of messages to soften demands and express politeness. This study has pedagogical implications for teaching English for business purposes to both L2 learners and novice writers.

Thematic structure of the translated rhetorical questions in the Quranic text into English

Translating rhetorical questions from one language into another requires the translator’s attention, since rhetorical questions are interrogative in form yet do not expect answers but rather are used to deliver rhetorical functions such as assertion, negation, exclamation and showing abundance. Further, the sustenance of the thematic structure of rhetorical questions is important to maintain their functions. As such, the present study analysed the thematic structure (theme-rheme) of the Quranic rhetorical questions translated into English by Arberry (1996) to determine whether the functions of such questions are reflected accurately. To achieve this purpose, the study employed Halliday’s (1994) textual metafunction. The analysis revealed that the translator made some differences and changes in the thematic structure of the target text, mainly playing on the theme of the rhetorical questions of the source text. The rheme also shows some changes and differences, especially the grammatical categories. Accordingly, the functions of the Quranic rhetorical questions were not accurately reflected.

Learning to read patient notes in the workplace: How reading aloud and reading alongside can help students for whom English is an additional language

Much of the recent research in English for nursing has focused on the specialised spoken discourses rather than the written documentation that nursing students need for patient care. However, patient documentation can be challenging to learn, particularly for some students for whom English is an additional language. This study investigated how novice English as an additional language students learned to read patient documentation during their work placements, and the role that their workplace supervisors played in helping them learn. An ethnographic approach and discourse analysis of workplace interactions with three supervisors and 16 students in three Australian hospitals showed that most nursing students observed required explicit guidance from their supervisors to read the documentation and to understand the linguistic and rhetorical functions of those notes. The findings suggest that developing reading skills in the workplace should involve explicit guidance in learning to read the requisite documentation. It is recommended that English for Specific Purposes courses for nursing students pay attention to written as well as spoken discourses and that language specialists work with nursing educators to provide professional development for workplace supervisors and to ensure that guidelines and expectations for reading documentation are clear for supervisors and students.

Negation in Research Articles Conclusions: Rhetorical Functions and Move Analysis

Extensive studies have been conducted in various sections of research articles, including the abstract, introduction, discussion, and other segments. Remarkably, the conclusion, a component of this academic genre, has received relatively scant attention in genre analysis. Conclusions, serving as the concluding segment, play a crucial role in recalling the previously addressed issues, highlighting key research findings, acknowledging limitations, and suggesting implications for further research. In light of this, authors employ an array of interactive resources to engage with their readership effectively. As an essential part of interactive resources, negation is used to be neglected in discourse analysis. Hence, this study aims to explore the relation between negation and moves in research conclusions. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine how negation contributes to rhetorical persuasion with a focus on its functions and distribution across disciplines. This study shows the rhetorical functions of negation and describes the distribution of negation across disciplines and moves. The findings not only indicate that authors from distinct disciplines exhibit varying preferences in the utilization of negation in their research article conclusions, but also provide some pedagogical implications.

What can rhetoric bring us? Incorporating rhetorical structure into neural related work generation

The ever-increasing volume of research literature poses challenges for researchers in keeping up with related works in their fields. Automating the generation of related work section holds promise for saving time and effort. However, current models often fall short of producing coherent and logically correct related work with multiple sentences, a phenomenon we refer to as rhetorical structure chaos. Rhetorical structure describes how adjacent spans of units are connected to each other, and logically correct rhetorical structure is essential for a well-structured related work. Hence, to tackle the rhetorical structure chaos issue, this paper explicitly incorporates rhetorical structure information into related work generation. Firstly, we conduct the first rhetorical structure analysis for related work section, which provides insights into understanding the organization and arrangement of contents within related work. Then, based on two preliminary studies on rhetorical structure, we present a novel related work generation model called RSGen, which incorporates rhetorical structure at both the encoding and decoding stages. The encoding stage is facilitated with a rhetorical structure-based graph encoder, while the decoding process is guided by a rhetorical plan — ordered sequence of rhetorical functions of the related work. We conduct extensive experiments on three related work generation datasets to evaluate the performance of our model. The results show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on ROUGE metrics. An ablation study and more analyses further highlight the remarkable efficacy of introducing rhetorical structure into both the encoding and decoding stages.

The godly girlboss

ABSTRACT Network marketing has seen no shortage of criticism, but its capital gain for corporate owners and top-tier sellers has remained consistent. In this article, we focus attention on the strategies from which this success emerges. Because the discourses which circulate in these spaces serve to uphold multiple oppressive systems at once and do so under the guise of a seemingly progressive feminism, we see import in demystifying their trends. By analysing brand materials of hair care and wellness company, Monat, as well as the prominent social media presence of some of its most affluent ‘biz and beauty mentors’, we argue that neoliberal feminism and Christian femininity are both demonstrated and reified through the figure of the online influencer we call the ‘godly girlboss’. By exploring how the company’s top sellers integrate messages of religion, beauty, wealth, and wellness, we argue that their rhetoric functions not only to help them sell shampoo, but also to engender investment in a specific white, Christian, feminine lifestyle. In this way, their social media influence operates not only as a capitalist tool, but a political one.

Self-mention in Chinese linguistic MA novices’ and experts’ academic writing: A corpus-driven investigation of ‘we’

The research aims to conduct a comparative analysis of self-mention, particularly the usage of self-mention ‘we’, as a means of academic persuasion between Chinese linguistic MA novices and linguistic experts. Self-mentions serve various rhetorical functions in academic persuasion. However, for second language writers, mastering these rhetorical functions represents an advanced writing skill, which is contingent upon a proficient command of the structural aspects of self-mention phrases. In light of this issue, this study undertakes a collocation and chunk analysis. The objective is to analyze the collocation characteristics and chunk features of self-mention ‘we’ in international journal articles (ILJA_C) and Chinese MA theses (CLMA_C). This objective informs the choice of the research subject – identifying similarities and differences in the utilization of self-mention ‘we’ in two databases: ILJA_C and CLMA_C. This study’s methodology utilizes a corpus-driven approach alongside comparative academic discourse analysis within academic writing. The novelty of this research lies in its investigation of the collocation characteristics and chunk features of self-mention ‘we’ in CLMA_C and ILJA_C. This study represents a substantial contribution to the fields of second language acquisition and comparative linguistics by enhancing our understanding of self-mention in academic persuasion. Findings reveal significant disparities in the usage of ‘we’ between Chinese MA novices and linguistic experts. Novices tend to focus on constructing discourse logic, whereas experts prioritize establishing academic positions. Analysis of chunk structures exposes varying approaches to discourse and interpersonal functions, underscoring the necessity for novices to emulate expert usage patterns.

The Use of Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in the Discussion Section of Master’s Theses Written in English by Algerian Students: An Investigation of Gender Variation

Metadiscourse analysis plays an important role in exploring the rhetorical structure of different academic genres including master’s theses. Gender differences in writing the discussion section within this genre has been unexplored in the Algerian setting. Therefore, this study employs Hyland’s framework of metadiscourse (2005) to investigate gender variation in Algerian master’s theses discussion sections written in English within the field of applied linguistics. It seeks to examine possible similarities and differences in the use of interactional resources across the two gender groups. A mixed-methods approach was opted for to study the frequency and functions of these resources. The findings revealed a higher frequency of occurrence of interactional markers among female writers. Attitude markers were the most preferred interactional resources for both groups of writers with more diversity of lexical choices noticed within the female sub-corpus. Hedges were also significantly frequent among females while males exhibited more preference for using boosters. Self-mentions and engagement markers were found to be the least used interactional categories among both genders. This study also revealed that interactional metadiscourse markers perform different rhetorical functions in the discussion of master’s theses. Keywords: Applied linguistics, Discussion sections, Gender differences, Interactional resources, Metadiscourse

Mimesis and Mythos in Aristotelian Arabic Poetics

Abstract The Aristotelian sense of mimesis (i.e., fictional representation of an evoked world through plot and characters) continues to shape modern views of literature. The medieval Arabic reception of the concept of mimesis and its closely related concept of mythos (fable, story, or plot) through Aristotle’s Poetics reveals a different conception of literature—one that this article argues is not representational but analogical. While Aristotle sees mythos/plot as forming the main vehicle through which mimesis manifests itself in poetry, mythos (khurāfa) according to the philosophers of the Islamic world was irrelevant for the poetic. This is because they understood mythos not as “plot” but as referring, on the one hand, to the fictionality and fantasticness of poetic metaphor, which they deemed inessential for the success of poetry; on the other hand, they understood mythos as “story,” in which case they relegated to it a rhetorical function of persuasion rather than a poetic function of make-believe. Fundamentally, in both the poetic and the rhetorical, mimesis was understood as the expression of the comparable, not the representation of the likeness of an evoked world. This exposes an Arabic conception of “mimesis” that reflects a literature that seeks comparisons and demands the inference of similarities from the reader.