The aim is to describe which persuasive tool from the triad of Aristotle (Ethos, Pathos and Logos) is most commonly used in editorials to convey visions and ideas in the nursing journals of the last 5 years (2014–2019). A descriptive qualitative study, based on content analysis, was performed in 2020 and summarized according to the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research principles. Two hundred and eighty‐five editorials were included in the study, all of which were published in the top‐five (...) nursing journals, specifically, the International Journal of Nursing Studies (5‐years Journal Impact Factor [5‐Y JIF] = 5.022), the Journal of Nursing Scholarship (=3.374), the Journal of Advanced Nursing (=3.010), the Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing (2.990) and the Nursing Outlook (=2.867). Logos was the most widely used tool in 148 editorials (51.9%). Ethos was used in a quarter of them (n = 72, 25.3%) and the Pathos tool was used to a similar extent (n = 65, 22.8%). Logic is the most used tool for persuasion in nursing editorials; however, nurses who would capture the attention of the nursing community by writing an editorial should also consider the profiles of the potential readers, who might be attracted in different ways by logical‐objective, ethical–moral, or emotional discourses. (shrink)

Resumen Este trabajo se centra en la relación que se establece en el discurso entre argumentación y cortesía. Mi propósito es demostrar que la estructura argumentativa puede funcionar como un recurso que sirve de regulador de la imagen del hablante así como, en otro plano, un recurso que refuerza la actividad cortés. La mayoría de los estudios llevados a cabo hasta el momento han reparado en la función persuasiva de la cortesía, con lo que, en cierta manera, el acto cortés (...) se ha contemplado como un recurso “al servicio” de la argumentación. En este estudio intento demostrar que la relación entre ambos aspectos no es monodireccional, y que en ocasiones y, más precisamente, en determinados tipos discursivos, es la estructura argumentativa la que sirve al objetivo de la cortesía, sin menoscabar en absoluto la importancia de la finalidad persuasiva presente, a mi juicio, de forma más o menos marcada, en cualquier realización discursiva. De esta forma, se puede hablar de una relación de bifuncionalidad entre argumentación y cortesía. Para probarlo se utilizan textos de carácter persuasivo publicitarios y políticos. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the discursive practices of coercive persuasion deployed by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Communications to justify the rebranding Nigeria campaign as a policy designed for value reorientation of the citizenry in the wake of the country’s image crisis both domestically and internationally. Sampling data from select addresses and interviews of the country’s chief image maker during the campaign, the study analyses some discourse structures and strategies in the public discourse, drawing theoretical insights from van (...) Dijk’s Critical Epistemic Discourse Analysis to re-examine and re-interpret meaning in relation to knowledge claims in the organised persuasive communication. The article demonstrates that there is artful management of information and construction of knowledge in the persuasive discourse largely to present an institutional version of reality in re/telling Nigeria’s national identity narratives. The study concludes that the rhetorical means of controlling the discourse and managing the minds of the audience typify leadership practices of knowledge construction to achieve policy dominance given certain norms and conventions of nation branding practices. (shrink)

The article calls for a departure from the common concept of autonomy in two significant ways: it argues for the supremacy of semantic understanding over procedure, and claims that clinicians are morally obliged to make a strong effort to persuade patients to accept medical advice. We interpret the value of autonomy as derived from the right persons have to respect, as agents who can argue, persuade and be persuaded in matters of utmost personal significance such as decisions about medical care. (...) Hence, autonomy should and could be respected only after such an attempt has been made. Understanding suffering to a significant degree is a prerequisite to sincere efforts of persuasion. It is claimed that a modified and pragmatic form of discourse is the necessary framework for understanding suffering and for compassionately interacting with the frail. (shrink)

The paper explores the role of the media in influencing public opinion from an inferential-pragmatic perspective. It presents preliminary results of the study focused on representation of Russia in Western newspapers. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1995,2001; van Dijk 2009) and media linguistics (Fowler 1991, Richardson 2007, among others) the study centres around the linguistic means of construing ambiguity/uncertainty, viewed as a strategy of persuasion. We mostly focus on the semantics of certain groups of words and other textual (...) features such as indefinite pronouns, epistemic modality, passive voice, present perfect tense, interrogative headlines and some other tools used in media texts to construe ambiguity which, in its turn, arguably aims at influencing public opinion. We also look at presupposition, information structure, evaluation and transitivity. Though we have limited our study to the English language sources (The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, news websites of the BBC, Reuters, Express, Politico and Fox News, among others), we are not suggesting that linguistic ambiguity is a feature of Western, rather than Russian, or other languages' media. (shrink)

Previous research has noted the ambiguous persuasive potentials of reiteration: repeating a statement, slogan or image can work both positively and negatively, can both help and hinder the effectiveness of a political message. Considering that repeated propaganda in China is broadly ineffective in generating wholehearted public support, this article is interested in how and when repetition does achieve meaningful persuasion. Drawing on affect theory to address these multiple potentials, it critically reconsiders the nature of persuasion itself, arguing that affective (...) engagement is crucial in sustaining and consolidating temporary tendencies that lead to alteration in the social fabric. Looking at humorous ‘socialist memes’ popularised on the Chinese internet in recent years, the article conducts a discourse analysis on the patterns they reveal to break down this reiterative practice as an unfolding event, revealing how its humour disrupts official language and engages the public affectively. It argues that practice of repeating these memes produces interpretive ambiguities around the official language, and in doing so re-directs socialist persuasion towards a liberalised end. (shrink)

Persuasive social robots can influence human behavior through giving advice. The current study investigates whether references to prior discourse and signals of empathy make an advice-giving robot an even more effective persuader and whether participants follow the robot’s advice and drink even more water when the robot additionally uses these strategies. We recruited students and university staff for a lab-study in which three different robot personalities on the same robot type presented health-related information. In one condition, the robot (...) gave advice and referred to something mentioned earlier in the conversation (i.e., to dialog history), in another condition, the robot gave advice and used empathic signals, and in the third condition, the robot gave advice only. Our results show that participants drank significantly more when the advice-giving robot also used the persuasive strategies of empathy and references to dialog history than when the robot only gave advice. This study shows that both strategies increase the persuasiveness of the robot and makes it more influential. (shrink)

Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) as a sub-discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) emerged from the availability of social semiotic frameworks describing multimodal meaning making. However, weaknesses of these frameworks have raised concerns and prompted recent methodological reflections in MCDA. Inspired by these reflections, this paper critically assesses MCDA research on advertising persuasion and identifies a lack of attention in studies to account for the social and ideological impact of advertising. This shortcoming is argued to be attributable to (...) the weak empirical grounding of social semiotic frameworks which in turn is rooted in a ‘discursive gap’ (Bateman, Citation2019, p. 300) in multimodality as a discipline. The authors then propose methodological solutions involving eye tracking experiments and higher order data analytics which can strengthen the empirical basis of theoretical assumptions made in MCDA research on advertising. Drawing on methodological guidance for empirical multimodal research, the authors discuss specific issues in realizing this proposal, focusing on a strategy addressing operationalization challenges in experimental design and the affordance of a data cluster algorithm that calculates the common viewing path of a group of viewers. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between argumentation and persuasion. It defends the idea that these two concepts are not as opposed as all too often said. If it is important to recognize their differences (there are argumentative discourses without persuasion and persuasive discourses without argumentation), there is nevertheless an overlap, in which characteristics are taken from both. We propose to call this overlap “persuasive argumentation”. In order to bridge argumentation and persuasion, we will first distinguish the latter (...) from manipulation. In the second part of this article, we will analyze four cases of persuasive argumentation: the enthymeme, a few rhetorical figures, narration and visual argumentation. (shrink)

Persuasion is a special aspect of our social and linguistic practices – one where an interlocutor, or an audience, is induced, to perform a certain action or to endorse a certain belief, and these episodes are not due to the force of the better reason. When we come near persuasion, it seems that, in general, we are somehow giving up factual discourse and the principles of logic, since persuading must be understood as almost different from convincing rationally. Sometimes, for (...) example, we can find persuasion a political speech that relies on our feelings, emotions and values, but we can also find a persuasive person a dodger, busy in his own questionable activities that are intentionally performed in order to mislead and manipulate other people. However, I do not want to try to define a general notion of persuasion from the beginning. I would rather start with a conception that already has a place, even if controversial, in the philosophical debate. In particular, the version that I have always found particularly provocative is that provided by Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. This peculiar version of the idea of persuasion, which is often associated with the possibility of overcoming deep disagreements, is quite famous in the literature and often understood as indicating certain intrinsic limits of our reason-giving practices. The following are Wittgenstein’s famous remarks on persuasion: -/- 608. Is it wrong for me to be guided in my actions by the propositions of physics? Am I to say I have no good ground for doing so? Isn’t precisely this what we call a ‘good ground’? -/- 609. Suppose we met people who did not regard that as a telling reason. Now, how do we imagine this? Instead of the physicist, they consult an oracle. (And for that we consider them primitive.) Is it wrong for them to consult an oracle and be guided by it? If we call this “wrong” aren’t we using our language-game as a base from which to combat theirs? -/- 611. Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic. -/- 612. I said I would ‘combat’ the other man, – but wouldn’t I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.) -/- This paper is not devoted, as far as possible, to focus on interpretative matters about Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Rather, it aims to investigate whether there are problems and incompatibilities between this particular conception of persuasion and our contemporary understanding of our reason-giving practices and of our belief-revision procedures. The first part of this study will be concerned about assessing this conception of persuasion and trying to shed new light on it (and on its consequences); most of the work here is done by looking at some truisms and normative features of our practices regarding the rational updating of our beliefs. It also addresses the question: Is the resistance to reasons of Wittgenstein’s persuasion capable to avoid the strict dynamics of belief revision? The second section of this study concerns the possibility of limiting the scope of this conception of persuasion, thanks to some of our contemporary ways of understanding rational discursive practices (I will focus especially on Robert Brandom’s game of “giving and asking for reasons”). If our rational practices require at least a certain degree of epistemic responsibility, then how is it possible that one invokes the end of reasons (that would explicitly mean giving up this responsibility)? A third section is the attempt, on this basis, to try to revise our contrasting conception(s) of persuasion (with an eye open on the near doxastic territory). Are there other conceptions of persuasion which are more compatible with our rational practices and do not entail any version of the “end of reasons” that are so compatible with our individual and social epistemic responsibility? (shrink)

This article explores the putative addressee in the persuasion of diplomatic discourse by adopting White’s recent proposals as to putative reader/addressee positioning to specifically examine China’s communication efforts through South African English-language newspapers in the Xi Jinping era. Likemindedness is found to be predominantly construed, meticulously balanced with relative frequent construal of uncommittedness and very rare construal of un-likemindedness. And a set of 12 interrelated discourses are identified as fundamental ideological tenets in legitimating China’s African engagement and its vision (...) of world order. Findings show that the classical political discursive strategy of Us/them polarization is typically deployed. The analysis and discussion illustrates how White’s proposed framework can be systematically applied to offer new lines of analysis of persuasion and shed some light on understanding contemporary Chinese diplomatic discourse. (shrink)

As a part of religious discourse, Christian sermons are a “…persuasive discourse par excellence”. This is more pronounced in the Christian Prosperity Gospel, a system of thought and belief in which preachers The word preacher and speaker are used interchangeably in this paper. attempt to convince audiences to donate to their churches with the expectation that God will reward them with health and wealth. Previous research shows that the use of metaphors and metonymies pervade CPG sermons but (...) an explanation on the mechanisms through which they persuade is rarer. With this in mind and viewing CPG sermons from their persuasive angle; this paper sets out to investigate how metaphors and metonymies are used for persuasion purposes in televised sermons presented in the Gĩkũyũ language Gĩkũyũ is the language of the Agĩkũyũ who are largely found in central Kenya as well as in some other parts of the country. It is a Bantu language classified as a Zone E language by Guthrie. According to the 2019, Population and Housing Census, the gĩkũyũ is the largest tribe in Kenya at 8,148,668 individuals. The community has dominated in televangelism but the position is changing due to the proliferation of many vernacular television stations.. The data is drawn from authentic televised sermons. The findings indicate that metaphors and metonymies engender persuasion in sermons by affecting the perceived altruism and trustworthiness of a speaker in a sermon. This is done by means of manipulating various forms of distance suggested in the Media Proximization Approach. Metaphor is found to affect the axiological, epistemic, temporal and emotional distances while metonymy affects the axiological and spatial distances to activate certain pragmatic presuppositions which make them persuasive in a covert way. (shrink)

The author argues that the persuasive process is articulated within a dynamic linking beliefs and emotions. The different possible states of equilibrium balancing these two aspects define a persuasive process as more inherently rational or more inherently rhetorical. This latter, being marked by an immediate emotional participation, functions within a social context of the community type. It is dominated by an aesthetic form of communication, where epistemic belief proceeds out of a conformist adherence to the ethos of the (...) group. Its extreme form is represented by the discourse of propaganda. Linked to the epistemic structure of the rhetorical discourse there corresponds a moral structure of resentment and an authoritarian social structure. Although rational elements and emotional elements still coexist within concrete discourses, the possibility of distinguishing them in terms of autonomous functionalities represents the specific adjunct brought by philosophical reflection to the determination of the epistemic structure of persuasion. (shrink)

The idea that the operations of the mind are carried out discursively, even linguistically, has won wide acceptance among contemporary Thomists. What has not been explored, however, is the role of persuasion in motivating the actions of the intellect and will. This paper explores the possibility that some form of persuasive discourse is employed by the mind to move the intellect and will to precipitate action. Drawing on essentialism as a foundational ontology, I offer a prefatory theory of (...) persuasive reasoning –‘natural rhetoric’– to explain how it is that we persuade ourselves (and others) to do things, including things that are defective. (shrink)

연구자들이 제대로 주목하지 못한 파르메니데스적 ‘로고스’ 전통은 존재-인식-담론이라는 삼원적 구조로 이루어진다. 그는 전통적 이해가 강조하듯 존재론자일 뿐만 아니라, 수정주의적 이해가 강조하기 시작한 것처럼 인식론자이기도 하며, 동시에 두 기존 이해가 담아내지 못한 담론론자의 면모 또한 갖고 있다. 파르메니데스의 이런 역동적, 통합적 면모를 온전히 포착하는 제3의 이해에 도달하려면, 서시-진리편-의견편이라는 세 담론 부분의 유기적 구성에, 특히 서시와 메타 담론의 의의에 면밀히 주목해야 한다. 엘레아적 담론 전통 내에서 이런 파르메니데스 담론의 진면모를 분명히 파악하고 발전시킨 사람은 통상의 기대대로 2세대 엘레아주의자들이 아니라 오히려 그 반대편 자리에 (...) 흔히 정위되어 온 고르기아스다. 이 글은 파르메니데스적 로고스 전통을 과연 그가 어떻게 혁신하면서 계승하는지 추적한다. 특히 그의 담론을 전통 내부적 반론(안틸로기아)으로 규정한다. 파르메니데스적 전통을 하나의 커다란 지성적 훈련의 장으로 놓고 거기에 일종의 스파링 상대로 자신을 제공하면서 반론을 세워 줌으로써 파르메니데스적 설득을 보완하고 완성한 ‘악마의 대변자’로 자리 매김한다. 『헬레네 찬양』이나『팔라메데스 변명』같은 수사학 연설에서 수행한 그런 반론 과정에서 그는 설득이 진리와 따로 놀 가능성을 실험하고 음미한다. 하지만 그것은 플라톤이 ‘철학적’ 저작 『비존재에 관하여』에만 주목하며 문제 삼은 것처럼 그저 설득력과 그럴법함(에이코스)을 위해 진리를 희생하는 것이 아니었다. 오히려 진리와 앎에 지나치게 기울어 경직된 당대 지성에 균형과 유연성을 제공하기 위해 일부러 반대편에 힘을 실어 주려는 ‘반대를 위한 반대’요 진지한 유희였다. 이런 소피스트적 전통을, 플라톤의 과제가 아니라 우리 시대의 과제, 즉 진지한 유희를 나눌 수 있는 건강한 담론 문화를 만들어가야 한다는 과제를 위해 불러들이고 음미하는 것은 온전히 우리가 감당해야 할 ‘에라노스’(우리 몫의 기여)다. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo avanzar en el análisis de la argumentación religiosa, en concreto en la persuasión en la prédica actual, mediante el reconocimiento y cuantificación de los mecanismos pragmalingüísticos que favorecen la integración del oyente en el discurso del orador religioso. El corpus examinado consta de 50 homilías orales grabadas en la primera década del siglo XXI. Los resultados obtenidos indican que el empleo de la mayoría de dichos mecanismos tiene una incidencia semejante tanto en las homilías (...) para adultos como para las de niños, a excepción de las fórmulas interactivas y la recurrencia al saber popular en los que se evidencia con notoriedad la diferencia. Por tanto, estas conclusiones aportan luz a lo dictado en la teoría homilética de la actualidad que apunta que “hay que acercarse al feligrés”, pero no dice cómo. (shrink)

We begin with an analysis of the persuasiveness of assertibles and arguments in the texts and fragments of Ancient Stoicism, with a particular focus on those in which Stoic logic is presented as the tool to avoid the persuasiveness of sophisms and the Stoic sage as the one who can efface this persuasiveness by his expertise in dialectics. We then critically assess the contemporary consensus on the interpretation of these texts (notably in Chiaradona, Sedley and Tieleman), according to which Chrysippus (...) is interested in extra-logical forms of discourse. Tieleman further argues that Chrysippus uses persuasive premises for constructive purposes. We reject the thesis concerning Chrysippus' recognition of extra-logical truths, on the basis of the Stoic ideal of the sage, concluding instead that in Stoicism, (1) pithanon refers primarily to false assertibles, arguments and presentations and (2) the Stoic sage cannot be persuaded, but he can persuade his students in order to prepare their souls to receive the Stoic doctrines. (shrink)

Jeffrey J. Maciejewski’s Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric reveals why human nature is dependent on an internally constituted form of persuasive discourse to bring about human action. This book puts forth that use of rhetorical discourse is natural to the human person and makes possible the fullest apprehension of human goods.

Science communication has gained high importance in the current knowledge and risk society. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of qualitative studies on how non-experts and experts engage in opinionated scientific debates and which linguistic devices they use to gain influence on other people’s attitudes toward a scientific issue. In our study, we examine dialogical modes of science communication (i.e. weblogs) used by bloggers and audiences to engage into opinionated discourse about scientific endeavors. As those exchanges easily lead to (...) controversies between different points of views, stances and attitudes, we focus from a rhetorically-driven linguistic perspective on devices to persuade the other participants and readers and to control the discourse. Hence, we ask which linguistic instruments are used to gain influence on influence. The aim of our study is to get deeper insights into the persuasive strategies mainly used in those forms of external science communication. (shrink)

This paper presents a model of persuasion in terms of goals and beliefs. Among the various ways to influence people, that is, to raise or lower the likelihood for them to pursue some goal, ranging from threat to suggestion, persuasion is viewed as a case of communicative non-coercive goal hooking. A persuader leads a persuadee to pursue some goal out of a free choice, i.e., by convincing him/her that the proposed goal is useful for some other goal that the persuadee (...) already has. It is argued that the Aristotelian persuasive strategies of logos, ethos and pathos (rational argumentation, the speaker¿s credibility and reliability, and the appeal to emotion) are always present in every persuasive discourse, and that they are exploited to raise the value of the goal proposed and to strengthen the believability of the link between it and the persuadee¿s previous goals. The paper proposes an analysis of discourse in terms of a hierarchy of goals as a tool to single out these strategies within the discourse structure. By applying this model to different kinds of persuasive messages (political discourse, advertising, dialogues in the health domain), it shows how, in the fragments presented, this kind of analysis allows to clarify the relationships between the persuader¿s and the persuadee¿s goals and to elucidate how much and how directly the persuader appeals to logos, ethos and pathos in his/her discourse. (shrink)

Persuasive definitions – those that convey an attitude in the act of naming – are frequently employed in discourse and are a form of strategic maneuvering. The dynamics of persuasive definition are explored through brief case studies and an extended analysis of the use of the “war” metaphor in responding to terrorism after September 11, 2001. Examining persuasive definitions enables us to notice similarities and differences between strategic maneuvering in dialectical and in rhetorical argument, as well (...) as differences between the role of strategic maneuvering in normatively ideal argument and in actually existing argument. This will avoid the double standard of comparing ideal dialectic with actual rhetoric, or vice versa. The results of the analysis suggest possibilities for a rapprochement between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation. (shrink)

The author argues that the persuasive process is articulated within a dynamic linking beliefs and emotions. The different possible states of equilibrium balancing these two aspects define a persuasive process as more inherently rational or more inherently rhetorical. This latter, being marked by an immediate emotional participation, functions within a social context of the community type. It is dominated by an aesthetic form of communication, where epistemic belief proceeds out of a conformist adherence to the ethos of the (...) group. Its extreme form is represented by the discourse of propaganda. Linked to the epistemic structure of the rhetorical discourse there corresponds a moral structure of resentment and an authoritarian social structure. Although rational elements and emotional elements still coexist within concrete discourses, the possibility of distinguishing them in terms of autonomous functionalities represents the specific adjunct brought by philosophical reflection to the determination of the epistemic structure of persuasion. (shrink)

This essay offers a start on sorting out the relationships of argumentation and persuasion by identifying two systematic ways in which definitions of argumentation differ, namely, their descriptions of the ends and of the means involved in argumentative discourse. Against that backdrop, the traditional “conviction-persuasion” distinction is reassessed. The essay argues that the traditional distinction correctly recognizes the difference between the end of influencing attitudes and that of influencing behavior—but that it misanalyzes the means of achieving the latter (by (...) focusing on emotional arousal) and that it mistakenly contrasts “rational” and “emotional” means of influence. The larger conclusion is that understanding the relationships of the phenomena of argumentation and persuasion will require close attention to characterizations of communicative ends and means. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and JudgmentJames Arnt AuneSaving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Bryan Garsten. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 276. $45.00, hardcover.Something of what rhetoricians perennially run up against in modern political philosophy is illustrated by a recent article by Jürgen Habermas in Communication Theory. In a searing indictment of contemporary democracy and the mass media, Habermas writes, "Issues (...) of political discourse become assimilated into and absorbed by the modes and contents of entertainment. Besides personalization, the dramatization of events, the simplification of complex matters, and the vivid polarization of conflicts promote civic privatism and a mood of antipolitics" (2006, 422). Any historian of political communication in the Western democracies since the early nineteenth century is bound to be puzzled by this observation, for the emergence of mass democracy in the United States and England, at least, was characterized by intense popular participation in politics, precisely because political campaigns were heavily personalized, dramatized, simplified, and polarized. At the beginning of the article, Habermas praises Aristotle's Politics for its union of normative theorizing and empirical research, forgetting apparently that Aristotle also wrote a normative and empirical Rhetoric.That Habermas distrusts persuasion is obvious, but what is less clear is how the rhetoriphobia he shares with virtually every modern and contemporary philosopher came about. Bryan Garsten's book—the most important work on rhetoric and political philosophy since Ronald Beiner's Political Judgment—makes the startlingly original argument that the anti-rhetorical stance not only is grounded in a suspicion of private judgment, but that it can be traced back to Hobbes's, Rousseau's, and Kant's fear of the persuasive power of post-Reformation religious enthusiasm. Garsten not only provides provocative rereadings of these three fathers of modern liberalism but also extends our understanding of rhetorical and political judgment in Aristotle and Cicero. His analysis of the problems of persuasion and democracy in the twentieth century, while somewhat less satisfying, includes cogent criticisms of Rawls, Habermas, and theorists of deliberative democracy from what might be called a Ciceronian-Madisonian republican stance. [End Page 94]Saving Persuasion began as a doctoral dissertation in Government at Harvard, under the direction of Harvey Mansfield—after Allan Bloom, perhaps the most influential and controversial of the disciples of Leo Strauss. Although Garsten's book displays both the virtues and vices of Straussianism, it would be unfair to dismiss it as a neoconservative manifesto for rhetoric. (An enthusiastic review of the book appeared in the neoconservative Weekly Standard in February 2007, illustrating the curious fact that the Right "gets" rhetoric in ways that liberals and leftists do not (Deneen 2007).) Currently an assistant professor of political science at Yale, Garsten also received an MA from Cambridge in political theory and intellectual history. His book reveals the influence of Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School of political theory, whose insistence on reading political philosophy in its historical context is the antithesis of the Straussian rejection of historicism. Garsten thus combines the Straussian emphasis on close reading with the contextual-rhetorical perspective of Skinner; this unique synthesis enables Garsten to solve some ongoing problems in textual interpretation (especially the relationship between Academic skepticism and Stoic natural law theory in Cicero) while developing interesting causal arguments about the rise of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, the decline of interest in rhetoric by liberal political theorists, and the pathologies of contemporary democratic politics.The book is divided into two main parts, following an introduction in which Garsten lays out his central thesis: "[A] politics of persuasion—in which people try to change one another's minds by appealing not only to reason but also to passions and sometimes even prejudices—is a mode of politics worth defending. Persuasion is worthwhile because it requires us to pay attention to our fellow citizens and to display a certain respect for their points of view and their judgments" (3). Persuasion rightly understood cannot be reduced either to manipulation or pandering. Rather, persuasion is inextricably linked to judgment, a human faculty threatened by modernity. Judgment is "the mental activity of responding to particular situations" by... (shrink)

In this paper I argue that to explain and resolve some kinds of disagreement we need to go beyond what logic alone can provide. In particular, following Perelman, I argue that we need to consider how arguments are ascribed different strengths by different audiences, according to how accepting these arguments promotes values favoured by the audience to which they are addressed. I show how we can extend the standard framework for modelling argumentation systems to allow different audiences to be represented. (...) I also show how this formalism can explain how some disputes can be resolved while in others the parties can only agree to differ. I illustrate this by consideration of a legal example. Finally, I make some suggestions as to where these values come from, and how they can be used to explain differences across jurisdictions, and changes in views over time. (shrink)

This article echoes concerns recently formulated regarding CDA’s lack of attention to cognitive science. From a cognitive pragmatic viewpoint, I argue that discourse analysis should undergo an epistemological change in order to seriously take into account what cognitive approaches have to offer, in particular as regards the automatic processing of utterances and the subsequent non-conscious evaluation of contents vis-a-vis previously held beliefs. I regard the epistemological tension in CDA as stemming from a wider tension of the same sort affecting (...) social science in general. Considering discourse as a process of interpretation and evaluation, I address briefly the influence of evidentiality as a pragmatic category in persuasive discourse and conclude that the uptake of new beliefs on the basis of discourse is oriented towards the maximization of relevance in the sense of Sperber and Wilson. (shrink)

This paper examines the attitudes toward political persuasion at work in the writings of Han Feizi (280-233 BCE). Particular attention is given to differentiating Han Feizi's thought from Western analogs under which it has suffered hermeneutically, especially comparisons with Plato's so-called "noble lie." After probing some of the psycho-social assumptions of ancient Greek versus Chinese political discourse, Han Feizi's own view is reconstructed, according to which practices of deception and secrecy are permissible under specific moral and political conditions. It (...) is argued that not only is the account which emerges a more charitable interpretation of Han Feizi, but also that it is independently attractive as a helpful and realistic lens through which to view contemporary anxieties concerning political discourse and transparency. (shrink)

Science communication has gained high importance in the current knowledge and risk society. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of qualitative studies on how non-experts and experts engage in opinionated scientific debates and which linguistic devices they use to gain influence on other people’s attitudes toward a scientific issue.In our study, we examine dialogical modes of science communication (i.e. weblogs) used by bloggers and audiences to engage into opinionated discourse about scientific endeavors. As those exchanges easily lead to controversies (...) between different points of views, stances and attitudes, we focus from a rhetorically-driven linguistic perspective on devices to persuade the other participants and readers and to control the discourse. Hence, we ask which linguistic instruments are used to gain influence on influence. The aim of our study is to get deeper insights into the persuasive strategies mainly used in those forms of external science communication. (shrink)

Is contemporary media society still interested in truth? This paper will try to unravel the vaguely suspicious epistemic relationship between information marketers and information consumers in today's society. There seems to have been forged a feeling of quasi-omniscience within the private and public spheres wherein people, due to the sheer volume of inforntation readily accessible for viewing at any time, become predisposed to exhibit an intriguingly relaxed relationship with knowledge. If the current systems of information seem to trivialize the question (...) of truth or falsehood, and since the public is apparently just interested in spectacles, then how must we view epistemologically the status of contemporary media discourse? Does it still reveal truth or is it simply empry talk? To address this question, the paper explores a possible parallelism between Plato's critique of rhetoric in his dialogue, Gorgias, and Jean Baudrillard's critique of contemporary media society. (shrink)

If we consider the field of argumentation studies, we notice that many approaches consider argumentation in a pragmatic manner and define it as a verbal activity oriented towards the realization of a goal . The idea that subtends—in an explicit or implicit way—most of these approaches is that argumentation fundamentally aims to produce an effect upon an addressee, and that this effect consists in a change of attitude with respect to a viewpoint : argumentation theories inevitably confront the issue of (...) persuasion. In this article, I defend, on the contrary, the hypothesis that it is not necessary to have recourse to the notion of persuasion, nor even to speak of an attempt to provoke a change of attitude in the addressee , in order to develop a general definition of argumentation. It seems to me that there are serious reasons to uncouple, insofar as a definition is concerned, argumentation and persuasion. I will look to identify these reasons, to formulate them and to evaluate their strength. In the same vein as recent works by Christian Plantin and Marc Angenot, I will try to contribute to the development of a non - persuasive conception of argumentation. Such a conception bases the definition of argumentation on the pragmatic aims of “justification” and “positioning”, as well as on the articulation of a discourse and a counter-discourse. I argue that such a conception might offer a better empirical adequacy than those that link, insofar as a definition, the argumentative activity and the persuasive aim. (shrink)

Both 'persuasion' and 'rational convincing' play a major role in argumentative discourse but only the latter is said to constitute argument and be amenable to traditional logical analysis. I argue against this assumption by showing that there are many paradigmatic instances of persuasion which are best understood as implicit arguments. So understood, acts of persuasion can conform to well recognized argument schemata and are best assessed accordingly. I shall argue that the attempt to distinguish arg ument and persuasion is (...) fraught with difficulties. I contrast my conclusions with those of authors like Gilbert, Johnson, and Johnson and Blair. (shrink)

This article takes a linguistic perspective of argumentation, as proposed by Marion Carel and Oswald Ducrot with the “Théorie des blocs sémantiques” (SBT: Semantic Block Theory). This theory argues that the meaning of a linguistic entity is determined by a collection of discourses that this entity calls to mind. Describing the meaning of a word, a syntagm or an utterance amounts to specifying the argumentative linkages (“enchaînements argumentatifs”) allowed by these entities. We propose a semantic and argumentative analysis of syntagms (...) mujer fácil , femme facile [easy woman] and hombre fácil , homme facile [easy man] that, in Romance languages in particular, hold different meanings: both hombre fácil/homme facile describe a man’s character or nature, whereas mujer fácil/femme facile, in their most common usage, imply a certain sexual behavior. We will compare the argumentative linkages that make up the meaning of mujer fácil/femme facile with those of other expressions that are part of the same semantic block. Also, this analysis will connect the proposed description to certain proverbial discourse about women, and it will call attention to the role that these expressions can play in a persuasive strategy. (shrink)

The article analyses presuppositions in higher education policy documents of the OECD and the European Union from the point of view of their persuasiveness. Presuppositions set the assumed common ground, which in turn sets the frame of interpretation of texts. However, by presenting something as common ground, presuppositions also shape our views of the reality. Used in this way, presuppositions can be used to present contested views, which would be open to criticism if they were asserted explicitly. The analysis does (...) not evaluate the actual success of persuasion, but rather how policy documents are construed in a persuasive way. (shrink)

In this much-anticipated revision and translation of Scienza e Retorica, Marcello Pera argues that rhetoric is central to the making of scientific knowledge. Pera begins with an attack of what he calls the "Cartesian syndrome"--the fixation on method common to both defenders of traditional philosophy of science and its detractors. He argues that in assuming the primacy of methodological rules, both sides get it wrong. Scientific knowledge is neither the simple mirror of nature nor a cultural construct imposed by contingent (...) interests, thus we must replace the idea of the scientific method with that of scientific rhetoric. Pera proposes a new dialectics of science to overcome the tension between normative and descriptive philosophies of science by focusing on the rhetoric in the proposition, defense, and argumentation of theories. Examining the uses of rhetoric in debates drawn from Galileo’s Dialogues, Darwin’s Origins, and the Big Bang-Steady State controversy in cosmology, Pera shows how the conduct of science involves not just nature and the inquiring mind, but nature, the inquiring mind, and a questioning community which, through the process of attack, defense, and dispute, determines what is science. Rhetoric, then, is an essential element in the constitution of science as the practice of persuasive argumentation through which results gain acceptance. (shrink)

How does propaganda differ from the legitimate persuasive practices that animate a healthy democracy? The question is especially salient as digital technologies facilitate new modes of political persuasion and the public square saturates with information factual and fabricated alike. In answer, we propose a typology based on the rhetorical strategies that propaganda and its legitimate counterpart each employ. We argue that the point of contrast between the phenomena turns on two key features: whether the rhetorical strategy sufficiently engages our (...) deliberative capacities, and whether it runs counter to our epistemic interests. While in practice the boundary between the concepts is not always sharp, the account identifies a set of conceptual tools that help better frame and come to grips with propaganda and legitimate political persuasion in an information-dense and increasingly complex media landscape. (shrink)

The paper develops ethical guidelines for the development and usage of persuasive technologies (PT) that can be derived from applying discourse ethics to this type of technologies. The application of discourse ethics is of particular interest for PT, since ‘persuasion’ refers to an act of communication that might be interpreted as holding the middle between ‘manipulation’ and ‘convincing’. One can distinguish two elements of discourse ethics that prove fruitful when applied to PT: the analysis of the (...) inherent normativity of acts of communication (‘speech acts’) and the Habermasian distinction between ‘communicative’ and ‘strategic rationality’ and their broader societal interpretation. This essay investigates what consequences can be drawn if one applies these two elements of discourse ethics to PT. (shrink)

Real Language Series General Editors:Jennifer Coates, Jenny Cheshire, Euan Reid This is a sociolinguistics series about the relationships between language, society and social change. Books in the series draw on natural language data from a wide range of social contexts. The series takes a critical approach to the subject, challenging current orthodoxies, and dealing with familiar topics in new ways. Gender and Discourse offers a critical new approach to the study of language and gender studies. Women moving into the (...) public domains of power traditionally monopolised by men are creating new identities for themselves, and the language that is used by them and about them offers an insight into gender roles. Clare Walsh reviews the current dominance/difference debates, and proposes a new analytical framework which combines the insights of critical discourse and feminist perspectives on discourse to provide a new perspective on the role of women in public life. A superbly accessible book designed for students and researchers in the field, the book features: - topical case studies from the arenas of politics, religion and activism- a new analytical framework, also summarised in chart form so the reader can apply their own critical analyses of texts. - written and visual text types for the reader's own linguistic and semiotic analysis. 'This important book takes up a neglected question in the study of language and gender - what difference women make to the discourse of historically male-dominated institutions - and brings to bear on it both the insights of feminist scholarship and evidence from women's own testimony. Clare Walsh's analysis of the dilemmas women face is both subtle and incisive, taking us beyond popular 'Mars and Venus' stereotypes and posing some hard questions for fashionable theories of language, identity and performance. (shrink)

The present work has the object of investigating the relation between emotion and persuasion in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, not only by analyzing its lexical expressions, but also the emotional scenarios and the context in which they manifest. The Cyropaedia, usually considered as the epitome of Xenophon’s theory of leadership, shows us a crucial characteristic of Cyrus: his capacity of appealing to different emotions depending on the audience. This inquiry will allow us to trace the constitutive elements of a possible theory of (...) emotions in Xenophon, which we will see, differs partially from the Aristotelian treatment in the Rhetoric, but also from his historiographic predecessors, Herodotus and Thucydides. Xenophon's theory reveals a complexity that exceeds the mere appellation to emotions through speech as a means of persuasion and shows an intimate relation with the fourth century B.C. political and constitutional discourse. (shrink)

This study provides a critical discourse analysis of letters of complaint by Jordanian university students. It aims to investigate the rhetorical pattern in these letters and explore the main strategies students use to express their dissatisfaction about certain issues and persuade the addressee to take action. To this end, permissions were obtained to collect data from two universities in Jordan: Jordan University of Science and Technology and World University of Islamic Studies and Education. The data were analyzed both qualitatively (...) and quantitatively through two analytic frameworks within critical discourse analysis : genre analysis to investigate the rhetorical pattern of complaint letters, and discursive analysis to investigate the main strategies of persuasion. These strategies were then categorized according to Aristotle’s means of persuasion: ‘ethos’, ‘logos’ and ‘pathos’. The analysis showed that written complaint was a distinctive genre with distinctive moves. It also revealed that persuasion by means of pathos was more prevalent than the other two types. Socio-cultural values have been shown to be so powerful in Jordanian society even in neutral situations such as academic context. This study will hopefully contribute to the fields of genre analysis and CDA in cross-cultural communication. (shrink)

In this article we take the use of examples as a means to explore the processes of persuasion and consensus-construction involved in the legitimation of popular management knowledge. Examples, as concrete instances or events used to substantiate a wider argument, have been variedly regarded in different research traditions. Classical logic and rhetoric have considered them an inferior form of argument, useful for pedagogic or public debate but inadequate for higher forms of thought. This spirit still permeates much psychological research on (...) communication, where the great persuasive import of examples has been contrasted with more scientific and formal resources for argumentation. Considered in this light, the contingent and episodic nature of examples seems to make them cognitively inferior to explicit statements of general rules. However, various strands of research on the nature of scientific knowledge have shown that implicit forms of knowledge are an integral part of scientific expertise. Examples may thus be more central to disciplinary thought than the conventional normative view seems to allow. In this spirit, we explore the use of examples in a hotly contested field, that of popular discourse on business and management. The profusion of examples in this kind of writing has been often noted, and almost as often criticized. We seek to explore more fully how these examples are deployed, examining the discursive devices that mark examples within the development of the text, their function as rhetorical moves, and their role in presenting arguments that are never otherwise made explicit. (shrink)

The present work examines the role of persuasive lexicon in legal discourse through the analysis of emotional devices at a lexical and rhetorical level. Our preliminary premise is that emotion is deployed by experts to convey the sentiment of shared values and epistemic trust: the need to rely on the tenets of the law as fair and conducive to the common good. The corpus of our study is constituted by the conclusions in their original Spanish, and their translation (...) into English, by the Advocate General Manuel Campos on the challenge by Hungary and Poland of the regulation establishing a “conditionality regime” in the event of a rule-of-law breach in a EU Member State. To this end, we undertake a two-pronged analysis of legal persuasion to find out what emotional devices are deployed to convey the rule-of-law principles of justice, non-discrimination, equality and solidarity. At a first stage, we concentrate upon the polarity and intensity of emotion words and their categories. Emotional implicatures in the shape of legal technolects and metaphorical ontologies and the way they are deployed in each text constitutes the second part of our study. Among our conclusions are that both the original and target texts have a strong persuasive character, mainly grounded in the negative emotion of fear and the positive emotion of trust, and that there are variances in the emotional language deployed in either version due to the different mechanics of each law system and to functional differences between English and Spanish. (shrink)

In this book, Andreas Serafim sets out to investigate the use of religious discourse, by which he means any reference to religious ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in public speaking contexts in classical Athens. Like Gunther Martin (Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes, 2009), Serafim examines religion primarily as a tool for persuasion, but he differentiates himself from Martin’s book by offering a more comprehensive study: he aims to take into account all extant speeches from t...