inglese monografico

Different meaning of persuasion

• a. The act or process or an instance of persuading (persuasion as an act/action/process: "act or process of persuasion").
• b. A persuading argument (persuasion as a means: means "a persuading argument").
• c. The ability to persuade: persuasiveness (persuasion as an ability of the persuader).
• 2. The condition of being persuaded: persuasion as an effect on the persuaded.
• 3. An opinion held with complete assurance; a system of religious beliefs; also, a group adhering to a particular system of beliefs ("an opinion," "a system of beliefs," or "a group adhering to that system of beliefs").

Persuasion definition

It’s a dynamic inevitable process, it can be interactive or intersubjective, this process involves at least two actors, the persuader and the persuadee, or the addresser and the addressee, aimed by the goal of producing an action, so a change in attitude or behaviour.

Generally speaking, persuasion may be defined as an inevitable and commonplace, dynamic, interactive or intersubjective process, involving at least two interlocutors, actors, or parties: the persuader and the persuadee(s), or the addresser and the addressee(s). Persuasion is a process, and a dynamic one, in which participants aim to influence or produce an action, broadly intended as a change in beliefs system or behavior. More specifically, I consider persuasion to be characterized by three main features. First, it is commonplace, inevitable and pervasive; second, persuasion is reciprocal and interactional; third, those engaged in persuasion aim to produce a change, which – be it in thought, opinions, attitudes, behavior or action – determines persuasion’s level of success.

Persuasion as a process

1) Inevitable and commonplace (pervasive): "What is crucial here to underline first is that persuasion as a process is in itself inevitable and commonplace" (pervasiveness of persuasion). In this sense, "persuasion is indeed related to the more general process of communication, which is itself an inevitable intersubjective phenomenon".

Communication is an inevitable intersubjective phenomenon "one cannot not communicate" (Paul Watzlawick), every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti behaviour) it is not possible not to communicate, everything communicates, even beyond people's intentions (i communicate what the other understands). Within communication, no matter whether with successful results or not, persuasion is pervasive.

2) Dynamic, interactive or intersubjective: Interaction - reciprocity, from interaction to persuasion’s goal: the very interactional nature of persuasion implies a move, or propensity, toward the structuring of others’ positions, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, actions. This may be more or less openly conscious or intentional, and work or not to yield successful results. A typical example: cf. our everyday situations, the seduction game, displaying all the variables of a persuasive process (intentional or not, successful or not) typically representing the interactive dimension of the negotiation of liking and being liked.

3) Goal-oriented: (level of success)

• Persuasion is successful when a sufficiently balanced measure between the other’s acceptance and/or appreciation (liking) and our own self confirmation (being liked) is obtained, so to produce action.
• This balanced measure can also be obtained by means of interchange of active and passive roles in time.
• When no reaction in the persuaded, and the game is played by one character only, we are facing a persuasion attempt, i.e. the persuasive process gets interrupted and fails. The persuasive process, to be fulfilled, requires some sort of (active) response on the part of the other.
• The apparent lack of reciprocity of certain games evidently starting from one actor operating on an apparently passive ‘recipient’ does not deny the interactional nature of persuasion.

In fact, no persuasion can be fulfilled without a truly interactional dimension: just relying on the ‘being liked’ (passive) response. Some sort of (active) ‘liking’ response on the part of the persuaded must also be performed, in order for the process to produce an action broadly intended changes in beliefs, or behavior. Persuasion is interactive and its responsibility is always shared.

Sum up persuasion’s three main characteristics

• Persuasiveness: persuasion is an inevitable and commonplace phenomenon.
• Interaction-reciprocity: persuasion as an interactive or intersubjective process, involving at least two actors.
• Level of success (goal-oriented): persuasion is aimed by the goal of influencing or producing an action (broadly intended as a change in beliefs system) - A balanced measure between liking and being liked + endurance in time are needed.
• Persuasion intrapersonal/interpersonal dimension, has to do with desires, intentions, motivation and will, choice, action and reaction...+ skills.

Strategic vs everyday communication

The difference depends on how deliberate the intention is, in order to achieve an expectation. Everyday communication is to be identified in all those communicative situations where the persuasive intent is not only more evident and deliberate. Strategic are thus the forms of communication typically characterized by persuasion. Amongst the various fields in which strategic communication is involved, there is one which is particularly emblematic an example: the political field (cf. "strategic studies").

Given the pervasiveness of persuasive process within communication, if it is inherently true that persuasion is generally designed with the intention of structuring the responses of others to developing events, a difference can be observed depending on how and to what extent is this intention deliberate. This is what makes the distinction between everyday and strategic communication.

Persuasion and political action

Persuasion specifically characterizes the political field as a choice area of strategic communication because of the very definitional underpinnings of the political action: "the political process typically involves persuasion".

• Persuasion also typically characterizes business negotiation.
• Persuasion can also be said to interest forms of economic discourse, less directly aimed to produce a positioning in opinion (financial reporting, news).

Politics and language: "the doing of politics is predominantly constituted in language". Back to persuasion and political action we can say that: "the rationale of political discourse [is] intrinsically rooted in the consent of its audience".

Political discourse and persuasion: "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed" (Lincoln, 1858).

Focus on political discourse

• Focusing on political discourse means observing an important source of evidence on how persuasion works.
• Analyzing political discourse critically also means gaining awareness of the persuasive processes on which political choices and action rely, and which ultimately define our world’s order.

Focus on “Political”

• Language (‘politichese’ vs. pol. vocabulary).
• Communication (external vs. internal).
• Discourse (innerstate vs. interstate): discourse is a social practice (Baker, 2006): a process ‘substance’ which can be experienced, acted, observed.
• Texts (various forms of): the text is any form of discoursal manifestation: the product of that process ‘substance’ (verbal – oral/written – and/or visual or behavioral substance ready to be analyzed).
• Speeches (kind of texts).

Contextual perspective

What type of text? Type of text or genre is a class of communicative events, with common purpose, recognized by their discourse community, genres also come with a formal shape or register, and operate in given contexts.

Genre: it comprises a class of communicative events, the member of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community. (Swales definition 1990)

Context: is defined as the structure of those properties of the social situation that are relevant for the production and the comprehension of discourse. Context is defined as the (mentally represented) structure of those properties of the social situation that are relevant for the production and the comprehension of discourse (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992; Van Dijk, 1998). It consists of such categories as the overall definition of the situation, setting (time, place), ongoing actions (including discourses and discourse genres), participants in various communicative, social and institutional roles, as well as their mental representations: goals, knowledge, opinions, attitudes and ideologies.

Register: configuration of meaning that are typically associated with a particular situational configuration or field, mode and tenor, but a register can also include the expression, the lexico grammatical and phonological features that typically accompany these meanings (Halliday and Hasan, 1989: 38).

• FIELD – area of activity (e.g. science, technology, law, medicine, the social sciences, business and economics…) + different degrees of delicacy + PURPOSE: more specific communicative purposes (rhetorical functions, text types, genres…)
• TENOR – roles of the participants (the sender-receiver relationship determines different language choice e.g. variation expected according to expert-to-expert or expert-to student communication)
• MODE – role played by the language, including the channel (written/spoken or a combination of the two) and eventually the rhetorical mode

Textual perspective: persuasion analysis framework

Evaluation: the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about. It includes his viewpoint or his feelings about the argument.

Ideologies: are defined as a basic system of fundamental social cognitions that organize shared attitudes or thoughts of groups of people. Ideologies are belief systems that are only shared by specific group of people, so they’re not taken for granted by the whole socio-cultural community, therefore, if these kinds of beliefs come to be accepted by the entire community, it becomes common knowledge.

Frames: we define them as structures related to the conceptualization of situation types and their expression in language (Chilton, 2004: 51).

Discourse world: "the mental space entertained by the utterer as ‘real’" (Chilton, 2004: 53), and negotiated through speaker and hearer interaction. It is the mental space in which the interaction between the speakers and the hearer is located.

(Strategic) narratives: storytelling instances and practices: both ‘what’ story and ‘how’ told are crucial factors for storytelling, as well as the teller and the tale + the poetic function.

Cognitive perspective: metaphor and emotion

Linguistic metaphor: novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of its normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept. Understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

Conceptual metaphor: a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. More technically, the metaphor can be understood as a mapping from a concept source domain to a concept target domain.

In a narrative perspective:

CONFLICT FRAME: is the typical scenario of the fairy tale (Lakoff, 1992: 466-467), two sides not equal in merit: a hero, who may or may not coincide with the victim and who has to defeat a villain, who by definition is the enemy.

Disproportion: dualism is also hierarchical

Manichean frame: it is a particular radicalisation of the conflict frame it is characterized by:

• Bipolar structure: Good and Evil
• Disproportion: the two sides are not equal in merit
• Predestination: the good side is winning in the end

The U.S. Constitution (1788) • We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Framework for persuasion analysis in text

NARRATIVE: is a storytelling instance and practices, accounting for both story and plot text (both what story and how told are crucial factors for storytelling) + poetic function (narratives can construct reality, going further than representing it, Lakoff). Narrative is dynamic instead frame is static. Narrative in strategic communication become strategic narratives, and this narrative is whose persuasive intent is typically deliberate (Freedman), narratives are designed or nurtured with the intention of structuring the responses of others to developing events.

Persuasion and power

Manipulation

Manipulation not only involves power, but specifically abuse of power, that is domination. More specifically manipulation implies the exercise of a form of illegitimate influence by means of discourse: manipulators make the other believe or do things that are in the interest of the manipulator, and against the best interests of the manipulated. (Van Dijk).

In a broader, semiotic sense of manipulation, such illegitimate influence may also be exercised with pictures, photos, movies or other media (Van Leeuwen, 2005). Indeed, many forms of contemporary communicative manipulation, e.g. by the mass media, are multimodal, as is typically the case in advertising (Day, 1999; Messaris, 1997).

Power abuse

"Persuasion" vs. "manipulation" (van Dijk): "the interlocutors are free" vs. "recipients are […] victims of manipulation". The crucial difference in this case is that in persuasion the interlocutors are free to believe or act as they please, in manipulation interlocutors are victims of manipulation so recipients are typically assigned a more passive role. This negative consequence of manipulative discourse typically occurs when the recipients are unable to understand the real intention of the manipulator.

Positive or negative persuasion’s intent

It depends on:

• On the kind of relationship there is between the participants in the process, together with their positions, on the way the persuader aims to convince the persuadee, whether he tries to narrow, or strengthen the gap.
• On the aims of persuasive action: which kind of change does the persuader try to foster in the persuadee, this change can be an improvement with respect to the individual or society wellbeing.

Persuasion sustainability

Can be defined as the capability to reach sustainable goals with the major degree of satisfaction obtained, for persuader, persuaded and the contextual environment. The maximum degree of satisfaction normally goes together with balanced commitment, shared goals, common well-being and constructive attitudes and effects. The elevation of personal goals instead tends to go together with general waste of resources, unbalance, inequality and disruption. The maximum degree of satisfaction has also to be evaluated in time. For an evaluation of sustainability also requires a perspective that accounts for temporal dynamics: the maximum degree of overall satisfaction has to be calculated in consideration of temporal endurance and hold. In other words, a sustainable persuasive action which makes everybody extremely happy just in the here and now can be less sustainable than a persuasive action which makes everybody considerably and sensibly happy in the long run.

It depends:

• On the kind of relationship: (including the social situation and context) there is between the participants in the process, together with their positions. It can be Symmetrical or Asymmetrical.
• On the way of persuading the persuadee: whether he/she tries to narrow, or strengthen, that gap. It can be Narrowing the gap: e.g. knowledge sharing or Strengthening the gap: e.g. knowledge hoarding.
• On the aims of the persuasive action: which kind of change does the persuader try to foster in the persuadee. Kind of change: be it in opinions, attitudes, thoughts, behaviours or courses of action, be it related to the individual only or larger samples of society, to what extent is this change aimed at ameliorating the well-being?

A singular factor per se cannot determine sustainability.

Persuasion and sustainability

• Persuasion’s sustainability can be evaluated in intentional terms (‘on paper’) vs. in practice, and needs the complex evaluation of the previous three variables.
• It can be collocated along a continuum between two extremes: Sustainable persuasion (‘other’-oriented or ‘good’) and non-sustainable persuasion (self-oriented or ‘bad’) (Ferrari).

Sustainability and freedom:

• Any evaluation on persuasion sustainability has to be dealt with on condition that / when the two interlocutors are potentially free to decide:
• Free to move and act (not in chains, in slavery conditions, with strong physical disability).
• Free to think: in full possession of their faculties (vs. not in full possession of their faculties, whether permanently or momentarily, due to present contextual external conditions).
• Free and capable to take care of themselves by themselves: self-sufficient (vs. e.g. newborn child who needs everything).

Which kind of power

• Red queen power: apparently strong, despotic, but practically weak as it relies on: fear, violence, hatred.
• White queen power: apparently weak, gentle, but practically strong, it moves deeper, more resistant and independent sentiments as it relies on: reliance, respect, love and dialogue.

No tyrant can survive...