Persuasion in English
Chapter 6
Communicating in English
Talk, Text, Technology
Guy Cook
Introduction
• Who uses persuasion: A girl pestering her dad for ice-cream, a
lawyer arguing for the innocence of the accused, an activist drums up
support for a new political movement or a new cause, a religious man
trying to convert his audience, a blogger posting his/her ideas on the
internet . . .
• The ubiquity of persuasion: Humans are social animals and need
to work in groups, so they have to work in groups of all sizes:
family, tribe, nation, international bodies . . But we are also
independent thinkers with different and often conflicting ideas.
We are assertive, often aggressively so, [we] want others to share
our views and behave the way we would like them to. This is
mostly for the good of all, but sometimes if in the wrong hands
can whip up irrationality and violence.
• Many English words denote one aspect or another of the verb
“to persuade”: advise, argue, beg, beseech, blackmail, bribe, cajole,
charm, coax, coerce, convince, entice, entreat, flatter, implore, inveigle,
plead, recommend, seduce, sway, sweet talk, urge, wheedle, win over …
(Cook 226)
• Persuasion begins very earl in life, well before the point when infant behavior starts
to diverge into different cultures and languages – (in the form of first sounds which
are instinctive and involuntary at first but then merges into deliberate strategies to
change the behavior and attitudes of others, such as crying only to seek attention;
they also use body movement to communicate and persuade.
• When the child starts to speak later, these other channels of communication are
not replaced by language. They work alongside with it; for this reason, linguists call
them ‘paralanguage’ from Greek ‘para’ meaning alongside. Paralanguage figures
prominently in persuasion, throughout life, even when language is the more potent
(able and powerful) communicative toolkit. For example adults use tears, smiles
and raised voices to get their way, and these tools are sometimes are more
important and effective than what they actually say. “Nice to see you” has a
different effect if said in a morose way, from when it is said with a smile and body
movement.
• This chapter concentrates mostly on the language of persuasion rather than the
paralanguage. But we shouldn’t forget that in influencing others, much more is
involved; this applies to public as well as personal persuasion, especially perhaps in
political and commercial spheres, where color, music, rhythmic chanting , banners,
hierarchal processions are used, for example in rallies and parades.
• Persuasion is of great academic interest, but also of personal concern to all of us.
• This chapter explores different forms, purposes, and effects of persuasion through
consideration of examples from a variety of contexts and media.
See example on of demonstrations outside Manila, calling to free Burma. Notice the use of
English as a language ( medium), clearly because the demonstrators are trying to convince
the world to pressure the Myanmar government, rather than address the government itself
(purpose) (Cook 227-8)
Classical Rhetoric
History
See p. 229
Dates back at least to 4th century B.C. (ancient Greece and Rome).
Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica – The Art of Rhetoric – influential in formation of the
principles of rhetoric.
Vickers (1998) has argued that it is no coincidence that the interest in rhetoric
emerged in Athens at the same time as democracy (although it was limited to
male citizens and excluded women as slaves). In this political system, where
decisions are taken through votes in the Athenian marketplace, it was necessary
for the proponents of a policy to win over their fellow citizens. A view or a
decision could not simply be imposed through force or by unchallenged
authority.
….evaluation of link between rhetoric and democracy.
Contrasting persuasive strategies
Example of Julius Caesar: Brutus’s speech vs. Antony’s
• See pp.230-1
Rhetorical styles and strategies
• Aristotle’s The Art f Rhetoric distinguishes three strategies of
persuasion, (reflected earlier in the contrasting approaches in both
Caesar’s and Shakespeare’s time).
1. reasoned proof (logos)
2. emotional appeal (pathos)
3. appeal to the good reputation of the speaker (ethos)
Some domains in which each of these strategies is used may be exemplified as follows:
 Modern science aspires to carry a point by logos alone.
 Many charity advertisements use pathos when exhorting people to donate –
appealing to emotions with picture of disaster victims
 Advertisements using endorsement, whether by a celebrity or an authority figure,
use ethos – working on the principle that people will transfer their trust or admiration
for the speaker to the product itself.
Other useful categories formulated in ancient rhetoric concern the style of persuasion:
 Is the use of language grand, or plain or somewhere in between?

Does it seek to overwhelm its hearers, or to be sparse and economical or to create a
perfect balance between the two? (Cook 233)
Rhetorical styles and strategies:
figures and devices
• Within classical rhetoric, a good deal of attention was paid to rhetorical figures and
devices which could be used by the successful speaker. One of these, the so-called
rhetorical question which simulates dialogue by taking an interrogative form, but
doesn’t expect a response, either because the answer is too obvious, or because
the speaker proceeds to answer the question him-or herself, for example, “You ask
‘What’s our aim? I can answer that in one word –victory’.
• Repetition is also an obvious, well known and apparently effective rhetorical figure.
• Rhetorical triplet, also known as three part list, which refers to using three
consecutive sentences (‘This is the faith’, ‘With this faith’ and ‘With this faith’ as
consecutive openings in consecutive sentences), building up to a climax ‘knowing that
we will be free one day’.
These sentences don’t only have verbatim (word for word) repetition but also places
grammatical structures in parallel. That is to say, they repeat the same construction
with different words – for example the case of infinitive clauses: …
to transform the jangling discords of our nation
to work together,
to pray together,
to struggle together,
to go to jail together,
to stand up for freedom together
(Cook 234-5)
See Reading A, in Cook pp.253 -260, for an example of rhetorical strategies, figures and devices,
as illustrated in the speech of Jawaharlal Nehru (one of main founders of an independent India
after World War II), upon the assassination of Ghandi on January 30, 1948..
Notice the use of ‘purposeful repetition’, cohesive devices, rhetorical triplets, … as well as the
influence of the Indian rhetorical traditions, established by Kautilaya in the fourth century BC.
The speech has features of oral speech, as many of the speeches were impromptu; for example,
both Nehru and Ghandi’s speeches are mostly: additive, aggregative, redundant, conservative,
close to the human life world, empathetic and participatory.
The influence of Indian tradition is clear in two ways:
a)
Following the dhvani aesthetic principle – ‘the use of poetic or dramatic words to suggest or
evoke a feeling that is too deep, intense and universal to be spoken’ such as grief for the loss
of Ghandi in this case. “The light has gone out” is the way death is referred to.
b) The scholar Kautilya’s advice to his readers that:
i.
ii.
iii.
arrangement of subject matter: arrangement in a proper order, the statement first of the
principal matter
connection: the statement of a subsequent matter without its being incompatible with the matter
in hand, right up to the end.
completeness: absence of deficiency or excess of matter, words or letters, descriptin in detail of
the matter by means of reasons, citations and illustrations, (and) expressiveness of words
sweetness: the use of words with a charming meaning easily conveyed.
exaltedness: the use of words that are not vulgar
and lucidity: the employment of words that are well known and clear.
iv.
v.
vi.
constitute the excellence of communication. Two more principles are:
vi. relevance (relation and importance to) the audience
vii.
& empathy (sharing the feelings with) the audience
Attitudes towards rhetoric
Greek and Roman rhetorical theory was that the art of rhetoric can and should
be taught. It was not regarded as something that comes naturally, nor was it
seen as right simply ‘to let the facts speak for themselves.’ The Roman
orator Cicero believed that a well-constructed argument showed respect
for the audience, and also aided decision making, enabling hearers to judge
it effectively. Rhetoric, in short, was seen as a virtuous activity for the public
good. This view is still upheld in many places and educational traditions,
notably in the USA – where public speaking is taught and examined in high
schools, and promoted by numerous organizations and publications as well.
An alternative point of view suspects the accomplished speaker of being
involved in some sort of deceit. This comes with the popular wisdom about
the virtues of plain speaking, and any artful endeavor to sway an audience
should be treated with suspicion. This counter, negative, view of persuasion
dates back to classical times as well. Plato said that Socrates equated all
rhetoric with deceit, stating that honest people should do no more than
simply state their evidence and reasons, and let the audience decide on
that basis (Cook 236).
Attitudes towards rhetoric (cont.)
This mistrust of professional persuasion has important implications:
At a criminal trial , does the conviction or acquittal of the accused depend more on the
eloquence of the their counsel than on the truth of the evidence?
On a personal level, there might also be an association in personal relations between
eloquence and insincerity, or being tongue tied and being honest. ’the deepest
feelings lie too deep for words’. See the quotation by Mr. Knigtly from Emma (Cook 237) ͍
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. – You hear
nothing but truth from me. (Austen, 2003[1816], p.338)
In our time, one reason for a negative view of professional efforts to persuade is the
discredited political propaganda associated withy totalitarian systems. The word
‘propaganda’ has since assumed a largely pejorative sense, associated with
oppression, deception and misinformation.
The negative associations of ‘propaganda’ mean that those professionally engaged in
persuasion no longer wish to have their activities equated with it.
Contemporary attempts to influence opinion – such as advertising, public relations
(PR) and election campaigns – are seen as quite different.
There are two distinct views of contemporary persuasion in relation to totalitarian
systems (Cook 237).
Attitudes towards rhetoric (cont.)
There are two distinct views of contemporary persuasion in relation to totalitarian
systems.
Some see the contemporary persuasion and propaganda as separate, and indeed claim
that operations such as advertising and PR are in an important component of marketoriented economies and liberal democracies, as they keep the public informed,
promote choice between alternatives and allow healthy competition. Supporters of
this view point to the multiplicity of views in current democracies . . . techniques used
both by ruling interests and by campaigns against them… such as NGOs..
The opposite view would see contemporary persuasion as essentially similar in kind to
classic propaganda, perhaps even worse, as it uses subtler and more effective
techniques. Such critics point to the disproportionate funds and resources available to
politicians and corporations making grass-root democratic opposition to them
comparatively powerless. The philosopher Jürgen Habemas (1980) suggests that public
relations and propaganda are equally manipulative and oppressive, and quite
antithetical (opposite) to genuine democratic decision making.
Herman and Chomsky (1988) use the phrase ‘manufacturing consent’ to express their
view that a notion of a public mandate for government policies in Western democracies
masks the manipulation of public opinion in favor of the establishment. In their view,
corporate-owned news media have vested interests in the status quo and consequently
distort how news is selected and reported, resulting in guaranteed endorsement of
establishment policy by the media (Cook 236-8).
Advertising
The techniques used in advertising are not so different from techniques used
in political rhetoric, such as Martin Luther King’s speech, or in propaganda.
Advertising employs a range of rhetorical devices to attract attention and
make the message memorable. There is really no exhaustive list of the
techniques used by advertisements, precisely because they are always
seeking to attract attention with a device which has not been used before.
But no matter how ‘original’ they may appear, advertisements do usually
resort to some kind of established techniques.
a) Advertising uses repetition, similar to what was used in Martin Luther
King’s speech, at the micro level of word repetition as well as grammatical
constructions, and a main phenomenon is also wholesale repetition,
where an entire message is repeated many times, in the tradition of
propaganda, as a kind of substitute to reasoned argument. This approach
makes propaganda, in Aristotle’s terms, an argument by pathos rather
than logos. In contemporary commercial sphere, advertising campaigns
demonstrate a similar faith in the persuasive power of wholesale
Advertising (cont.)
b) Advertising also uses parallel noun phrases with possible internal rhyme and a
pun- the play on the double meaning of a word, as in the example of an ad for
a Low fat dressing: New Year, New Look – Dressing to Impress, where New
Year, New Look are two noun phrases with the same pre-modifier but with
different heads, and Dress rhymes internally with Impress, and dressing is used to
refer to clothing just as much as salad dressing.
c) Some advertisements use no words at all and rely visual pun, where the
image itself calls up the name of the product, or its features, such as in the
example of Silk Cut cigarettes, memorable from the 1980’s in Britain, where all you could
see was a shimmering piece of purple silk, with a cut slashed through the middle.
d) Advertisements, like propaganda, rely heavily on emotion, often representing
idealized versions and visions of people’s aspirations, expressing and
influencing the values of the society in which they occur; for example, in the UK,
bucolic images of farms and countryside, welcoming grannies with traditional home
cooking; in Kuwait , family dinners, or navigating the desert with guy friends, diwaniya
settings with amiable tea…
e) Advertisements, like propaganda, are also heavily reliant on modes of
communication other than language; They seek the memorable and striking
symbols; for example, the golden arches M on a red background of McDonald’s similar to
the old yellow hammer and sickle on the red flag of the Soviet Union (Cook239- 240).
Advertising (Cont.)
So there are many similarities which cut across genres of public persuasion, and are
also curiously shared with literary genres too. Many devices of classical rhetoric
are still occurring in political oratory today, had been employed in political
propaganda campaigns and are now key too of contemporary advertising.
Advertisers are fond of repetition (internal or wholesale), as well as figures of speech
(hyperbole, punning, parodies, irony, metaphor and metonymy)
Advertising is a branch of a more general phenomenon of persuasive selfpresentation, public relations (PR), in which organizations of all kinds seek to
portray themselves in a favorable way, both to outsides (e.g. customers) or to
insiders (e.g. their own employees. This applies to organizations from businesses
to NGO’s (non-governmental organizations), as well as individuals such as royalties
or celebrities.
Public relations
The fact that PR is so widely spread in public life, its definitions are mostly vague with both positive and
negative indications, such as how Moloney (2000) regards PR:
mostly a category of persuasive … communications done by interests in the political economy to
advance themselves materially and ideologically through markets and public policy-making. (Cook
241)
According to Moloney, in PR:
1) Sources and purposes and originator are often undeclared, and therefore, unclear.
2) Points are asserted rather than argued or supported by evidence.
3) Information is factually accurate, but partial – in both senses of the word (both biased and incomplete)
4) Contrary views are evidence are omitted
See publication or corporate responsibility by a leading tobacco company (pp.241-2)
So the language of PR is often as vague and has
many general quantifiers (‘many people,’ ‘some people’, ‘ more people’)
& hedges (‘could be because’, ‘tend to’, ‘may contribute’)
and lacks detail (‘a poll in 2005’).
It adopts a familiar chatty tone (as though the message were a casual one between friends rather than any
kind of official announcement). This false friendliness has been dubbed synthetic personalization
or conversationalization, defined as a ‘tendency to give the impression of treating each of the
people “handled” en masse as an individual’ (Fairclough, 2001, p.52 – qtd Cook p. 242)
See example of personalization in Reading B, by Deborah Cameron, pp.243 & 261-6)
Personal Persuasion
Persuasion at a more personal level, among families and friends is not like public
speeches or propaganda , but everyone has their disagreements and tries to
persuade those closest to them of their point of view.
There are differences but there are also many similarities between techniques used at
the smallest scale of intimate relations and at the largest scale of public
professional advertising or political campaigning, just as there are parallels between
everyday and artistic creativity (see key examples in Chapter 5).
Research has been conducted at the level of the most basic of intimate relationships and
communication between a mother and her child. Erftmier and Dyson (1986)
examined the persuasive strategies of children, comparing their informal strategies
in speech with those that are taught to develop more formally in writing.
One example is of 6 year old Bruce trying to explain to his mom that he wasn’t being
selfish in grabbing two snacks (jelly), but was rather thinking of Elizabeth.
Unlike the largely monologic oratory and advertising we have looked at so far, this (the
personal communication and persuasion attempt)is an argument developing in
interaction. Point answers point, and the two speakers presumably do not know at
any given moment what is going to happen next, what they are going to sa,. IN
other words, this encounter is not preplanned.
Personal Persuasion (cont.)
It is not the case, however, that personal persuasion is dialogic in this way while public
rhetoric is entirely monlogic. Even the most public persuasion draws on face to face
features. Even when there is no actual response from the audience, the shape of a
speech or campaign is determined by responses which are projected or assumed by
the speaker of writer.
The good orator responds to the crowd; effective advertisers carefully monitor
consumer reaction. There are also formal and public instances of persuasion which
are structured in dialogue form, such as when counsels for defense and prosecution
pick up and rebut each other’s cases in a court of law.
Like the argument between the boy and his mother in the kitchen, political adversaries
don’t always predict the path of the argument and cannot rely wholly on preformulated plans.
See activities 6.6 and 6.7 (compare them to the case of Bruce and his mother arguing)
[Cook 246-248] to see similarities between these different forms.
In the job interview, just as in the personal encounter, there is no way of telling whether the
speaker is telling the truth or merely inventing reasons to justify his or her behavior. But, in
both cases, the speakers are: thinking on their feet, reacting and trying to anticipate the
responses from their interlocutor.
Evaluating Persuasion
Language is the unique attribute of our species. It is through language that we are able to
share ideas across time and space, or make joint decisions in such large groupings. As
collaboration to solve problems entails difference of opinion, joint reasoning is often
more fruitful than lone activity.
Some linguists have seen that language, and a child’s propensity to acquire the particular
language around him or her as fundamentally shaped by these two requirements:
i)
To share information and experience (Halliday’s ideational function; Jackobson’s
referential function; transactional function (chapter 1) (Koester p. 140, chapter 4)
ii) To form relationships: (Halliday’s interpersonal function; Jackobson’s phatic
function, the relational function [Koester p. 140]
If we take this view of persuasion as an inevitable consequence of a need for
collaboration and reaching the ‘best’ conclusion, then we will be interested in
identifying the ‘best’ arguments – i.e. ‘good’ or ‘bad’ persuasion.
‘Good’ persuasion appeals to reason and evidence, weighing the consequences, laying
out its arguments as clearly and elegantly as possible to facilitate the judgment of
the audience.
‘Bad’ persuasion is driven by a lust for power rather than a quest for the general good. It
lacks logic and evidence, and confuses and distracts its audience with appeals to
emotion (Cook 250).
Evaluating Persuasion(cont.)
In reality, actual instances of persuasion appeal to both versions , the ‘good’ and ‘bad’
approaches and techniques to convince.
An attempt to understand the process of arguments and make judgments about them,
is found in argumentation theory - which studies how humans do and should
reach conclusions through collaborative thinking (Grootendorst et. Al, 1996); early
work sought to formulate universal and absolute aspects of a good case, setting
out, for example, the stages and components of an argument, and how each can
be assessed (Toulmin, 1958); The components mainly are: the initial claim, the
evidence for it, the warrant for making it, rebuttal of counter arguments,
exceptions to the claim, and the degree of commitment in an argument (Cook 251).
So, while there are criteria relating to each of the components which hold across all
arguments, there are also (as later research has shown (Willard 1989), important
criteria which vary between different fields of argument (for example between:
a)formal/ institutional arguments and ‘market place’/ everyday arguments as
well as b) disciplinary differences as between fields such as medicine, law and
politics. The criteria for assessing what constitutes a good argument are therefore
subject to variation. C) Another source of variation is cultural difference – issue
already touch on, in connection to public speeches (Nehru’s).
Evaluating Persuasion(cont.)
The way that cultural differences that affect writing is studied under contrastive rhetoric,
which focuses in particular on how students and scholars writing in a second language
may be disadvantaged by unfamiliarity with the relevant rhetorical conventions.
Early work in this field tended to be Anglocentric and impressionistic, generalizing and
characterizing English writing as linear and direct, and ‘oriental writing’ as circular and
indirect.
Such claims have now been subjected to more rigorous examination based on analysis of
coherence and discourse patterns.
For example, Hinds (1987) argued that Japanese, Chinese and Korean writers prefer a ‘quasi
inductive’ style, in which the topic or thesis statement is implied rather than stated
directly. He relates this to the idea that these are ‘reader-responsible’ languages, where
readers are expected to draw their own conclusions from what they read, as opposed to
‘writer-responsible’ languages like English, where it is up to writers to make their
argument explicit to the readers.
Such approaches run the risk of overgeneralizing and stereotyping, but acknowledgement of
contextual and cultural variation in persuasion realize that attempts to formalize and
calculate what is a ‘good’ argument creates a danger of omitting from our analysis a
sense of humanity of persuasion and the role within it of factors other than reason
and evidence (Cook 252).