Persuasion in Public Discourse
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politics, society and culture discourse approaches to Persuasion in Public Discourse edited by Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu 79 JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY Persuasion in Public Discourse Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) issn 1569-9463 The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac General Editors Jo Angouri, Andreas Musolff and Johann Wolfgang Unger University of Warwick / University of East Anglia / Lancaster University [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected] Founding Editors Paul Chilton and Ruth Wodak Advisory Board Christine Anthonissen J.R. Martin Louis de Saussure Stellenbosch University University of Sydney University of Neuchâtel Michael Billig Jacob L. Mey Hailong Tian Loughborough University University of Southern Denmark Tianjin Foreign Studies Piotr Cap Greg Myers University University of Łódź Lancaster University Joanna Thornborrow Paul Chilton John Richardson Cardiff University University of Warwick Loughborough University Ruth Wodak Teun A. van Dijk Luisa Martín Rojo Lancaster University/ Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid University of Vienna Barcelona Christina Schäffner Sue Wright Konrad Ehlich Aston University University of Portsmouth Free University, Berlin Volume 79 Persuasion in Public Discourse. Cognitive and functional perspectives Edited by Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu Persuasion in Public Discourse Cognitive and functional perspectives Edited by Jana Pelclová Wei-lun Lu Masaryk University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/dapsac.79 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2018019441 (print) / 2018041682 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0138 6 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6359 9 (e-book) An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access isbn for this book is 978 90 272 6359 9. © 2018 – John Benjamins B.V. This e-book is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Persuasion across times, domains and modalities: Theoretical considerations and emerging themes 1 Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu Part I. Persuasion from a historical perspective Chapter 1 Patterns of persuasion in Hungarian medical discourse domain from the 16th and 17th centuries 21 Agnes Kuna Chapter 2 Construction of the speaker’s persuasive image in public discourse: Classical rhetoric revisited 43 Janja Žmavc Part II. Persuasion in political discourse Chapter 3 Metaphor as a (de-)legitimizing strategy in leadership discourse: The language of crisis in Winston Churchill’s Cold War speeches 65 Jan Sebera and Wei-lun Lu Chapter 4 Fictionalizing scenarios in political discourse: Catalan self-determination 85 Gonzalo Calle Rosingana Chapter 5 “The end is near”: Negative attitude and fear in political discourse 109 Francisco O. D. Veloso and Dezheng Feng Part III. Persuasion in social context Chapter 6 Reframing as a persuasive device in public speech: Beyond globalized biodiversity 127 Anna Franca Plastina vi Persuasion in Public Discourse Chapter 7 Dissuasion by characterization: The “poisoning” of an heroic analogy in Russian public discourse 149 Ludmilla A’Beckett Part IV. Persuasion in marketing Chapter 8 Saving face online: Institutional responses to negative customer reviews on TripAdvisor 181 Christopher Hopkinson Chapter 9 Constructing the ideal organization: Metaphor in higher education brand communication 207 Carl Jon Way Ng Part V. Persuasion in academic discourse Chapter 10 Persuasion in academic discourse: Cross-cultural variation in Anglophone and Czech academic book reviews 227 Olga Dontcheva-Navrátilová Chapter 11 Promotional strategies in academic writing: Statements of contribution in Spanish and ELF research articles 259 Pilar Mur-Dueñas Part VI. Persuasion from multimodal perspectives Chapter 12 Iconicity in independent noun phrases in print advertising: A multimodal perspective 281 Jana Pelclová Chapter 13 Persuasion in musical multimedia: A conceptual blending theory approach 303 Mihailo Antović Subject index 329 Name index 333 Persuasion across times, domains and modalities Theoretical considerations and emerging themes Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu 1. The nature of persuasion: Theoretical underpinnings The art of persuasion has fascinated scholars for more than two thousand years. And for more or less the same time, scholars have been interested in the numerous persuasive tactics utilized in different time periods in various cultures, communi- ties, genres, and discourse types (Packard 1957; Pettegree 2005; Dillard and Pfau 2002; Lunsford, Wilson and Eberly 2009, etc.). Despite the discoveries and further advances in various communication technologies, from the printing press in the 15th century, through telecommunication machines in the 19th and 20th centuries, up to the most recent state-of-the-art devices and applications, the nature of per- suasive communication is still grounded in the three rhetorical appeals described by Aristotle in the 4th century BC (Furley and Nehamas 1994). The speaker’s char- acter and image (ethos), the appeals to the audience’s emotional state (pathos), and the strength of the logical arguments (logos), when properly applied in the social, cultural, and political context of a given text, still represent rhetorical devices that in modern communication take advantage of verbal and other semiotic resources that participate in conveying persuasive intentions. However, we observe that as theories of persuasive rhetoric develop, a comprehensive study of the traditional triadic concept is still lacking, especially in terms of multimodal and multidisci- plinary approaches. This is exactly the gap we attempt to fill in editing the present volume: to showcase the diversity and multidisciplinarity of persuasion in public discourse, and the actual methodological approaches used. This volume understands persuasion as asocial phenomenon (van Dijk 2006) that consists in interaction between social actors (the persuader as the initiator of a persuasive communication and the addressee or audience as the target of per- suasion) in a public environment. The termpublic environment covers a broad spectrum of communication events that happen in the public sphere. The diversity https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.79.01pel © 2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu results from the variety of genres analyzed in the volume as well as from the spread of digital communication that has blurred the boundary between the public and private domains. In addition to traditional genres such as political speeches, news reporting, and advertising, all of which target a broad audience and are delivered at rallies or presented on TV or in press (as analyzed in the chapters by Žmavc, Calle Rosingana, Sebera and Lu, A’Beckett, Ng, Pelclová, and partly Antović), the book also provides analyses of texts that range from public speeches and book reviews ad- dressed to a limited audience of scholarly experts (Plastina, Dontcheva-Navrátilová and Mur-Dueňas), through medieval medical recipes addressed to scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries (Kuna), to dyadic interactions between the complainant and the respondent taking place online (Hopkinson) and to anonymous viral videos (Veloso and Feng, and partly Antović). Our volume thus offers an array of perspectives on persuasive strategies in the ever-changing character of public communication, drawing attention to both traditional and newly-emerging genres and providing the reader with a novel insight into the practices of persuasion in contemporary society. At a different but not mutually exclusive level, persuasion is also seen as a cog- nitive phenomenon since every persuasive message intends to change, modify or coordinate the addressee’s system of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors. But it is important to understand that persuasion does not necessarily alter a person’s political preferences or consuming habits; it is also about strengthening or (re)con- firming the addressee’s existing belief, knowledge and ideology, such as confirming their preference for a particular coffee brand or a political party. In accordance with Mulholland (1993: xiv), who claims that “persuasion will take into account and allow for differences in viewpoints”, this volume asserts that persuasion can inform the audience of the system of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of other members of a given community,