Riassunto esame inglese, prof Demata, libro consigliato The language of persuasion in politics, Partigton

Four-Year-Old Girl Found Dead in East London Housing Estate

A four-year-old girl has been found dead at an address on an east London housing estate at 1530 GMT on Thursday after reports of a knife incident. A woman, 36, believed to be the girl's mother, has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act after being arrested on suspicion of her murder.

The 35-year-old woman was allegedly chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter's disembowelled corpse lay next to her in the home in Clapton, east London. The woman, believed to be from Somalia, had her mp3 on full blast as she listened to the Muslim holy book.

It could be argued that the BBC article is "information-poor" in that it gives minimalistic detail of what occurred and leaves the reader in the dark about how the death occurred. The Daily Mail story is much more "information-rich," but the reader might question the relevance of some of the information, why is religion so mentioned so often and why the non-British origins of the woman.

actors are stressed.

2.6 evaluation and modality

2.6.1 modality as your degree of commitment to a belief

Modality refers to the grammatical system which speakers can use to express their degree of commitment to their belief that:

• something did or did not happen (degree of past certainty)
• will or will not happen (degree of future possibility/probability)
• should or should not happen (degree of necessary)

or to their belief that:

• someone did or did not do something (certainty)
• is able or unable to do something (ability)
• is wanting/willing or unwilling to do something (willingness or violition)
• should or should not do something (necessity or moral responsability)

2.6.2 modality and evaluation in political comment

Reports such as the bbc piece can be relatively straightforward statment of what is believed to be known. In contrast, the modality in newspaper opinion pieces can be concentrated and highly complex.

2.7 extension task. What examining grammatical

Evaluation can reveal: a case study of the US Declaration of Independence

It is an attempt at persuasion. The author floods the document with messages favorable to a particular worldview.

Those Americans who fought against secession and with the British called themselves "loyalists", those who fought for independence called themselves "patriots", both good examples of "insider words".

The Declaration constitutes two attempts at persuasion: first, an appeal for unity to an internal audience, the colonists, and an appeal for legitimacy and understanding of motivation to an external audience.

One useful way of studying transitivity and agency is to look at the use of pronouns. Pronouns change according to whether a participant is an active Do-er, so I, He, She... or passive Done-to, so me, him, her, us...

Jefferson (the author) carefully avoids the "us vs them" rhetoric, presenting the reader instead with an "us vs him" or rather "he" evaluative.

Dichotomy or opposition. The item He occurs always referring to the king of Great Britain George III. The item him, in contrast, is never used in the document, in other words, the King is always cast in active “Do-er” role and never in passive “Done-to” role.

Apporting blame to the single figure of George III, the rebels even claim to have not been “wanting in attention to our British brothers”, in order to reinforce this message that the king alone is to blame.

The most common pronoun in the document is the possessive our. A study of the grammar of the Declaration, especially the way pronouns are used, reveals how Jefferson attempts to flood the discourse with messages beyond the more obvious ones of liberty and tyranny.

These include:

• the agency of the king as Do-er and guilty party
• the agency of the rebels as responsibly minded, judicious but long-suffering Done-to victims and also the message of unity by continually talking of we, us and our

In reference to the colonist. But the relative frequency of “our” is evidence of how the Declaration is as much a declaration of ownership as of freedom, both evaluated positively 73 ways of persuading. There are many and varied methods of persuasion in different ways. One general level of division is between “persuasion by appeal to reason” and “persuasion by appeal to the emotions”. The distinction is similar to that made by Aristotle between logos and pathos.

A fundamental concept in sociolinguistics and communication theory is that of face and facework. “Face” is defined as the image we all project of ourselves to the outside world and “facework” is the behaviour we employ to project that image.

Politicians have two separate kinds of face, namely competence face and affective face. Competence face is one’s image as well informed, an expert, in control and authoritative. Affective face is one’s image as likeable, good-humoured.

however, one problem that politicians have is that the two kinds of face are not fully compatible, it is not always possible to project an image of authority and expertise at the same time as one of a normal easy-going person. It is a political skill to know when to prioritise one over the other in front of an audience.

Another distinction similar is that between ideational or conceptual persuasion, in which a speaker projects primarily their competence face and interpersonal persuasion in which the speaker projects primarily their affective face.

In the first, an author attempts primarily to persuade an audience of the veracity, logic or usefulness of his or her ideas.

In the second case, an author attempts to convince others that he or she is honest, interesting and worthy of attention, respect or tries to persuade them that they, the audience, are lacking some quality (wealth, power, safety) which the speaker is able to provide, a sort of persuasion by inducing desire or anxiety.

Projection of active face also often takes the form of expressing positively evaluated shared values such as compassion, patriotism, and faith. Another strategy of interpersonal persuasion is to flatter one's audience (the election four years ago wasn't about me. It was about you. My fellow citizens, you were the change). Most real-life attempts at persuading are likely to combine elements of both ideational and interpersonal persuasion.

Expanding on this simple two-part distinction, there are five more major models of persuading:

• The appeal to authority
• Comparison and contrast
• Problem - solution
• Hypothesis - evidence - explanation
• Association

3.1 Authority

In persuasion by authority, the persuader appeals to some sort of higher authority to convey and strengthen their message. One obvious example of this kind of appeal is in religion. Religious services tend to use appeals to religious writings. Scripture appeals to the highest authority of all, God.

or Gods, to persuade us that it expresses certain truths. Academic and scientific writings is also largely based on appeals to authority. In academic communication, writers continually back up their arguments.

3.2 comparison and contrast

3.2.1 "us" against "them"

The persuader invites us to compare and contrast an argument with one or more others. Evaluation plays a role when this model is used since there is usually the assumption or implication that one is better than the others. It is common among political analysts to make a distinction between two types of election campaigning, namely positive and negative campaigning. In the first, a party declares and promotes its own virtues whereas, in the second, one party reveals and attacks the presumed failings of its adversary.

Positive slogans are often criticized as being too bland and general. Negative slogans are sometimes criticized as being unfair.

Very generally, incumbents (quelli in carica) tend to opt for positive.

3.2.2 beyond "us" against "them"

Highlighting the contrast between two entities is one of the most useful and frequent ways of furthering a political or sociological argument. Such contrasts can come in very many forms:

• geographical
• historical
• conceptual
• political

as well as:

• what people have done in the past vs what we should do now and in the future
• what people generally believe vs how things really are
• how things are now vs how things should be
• what other thinkers have argued vs what I argue

3.2.3 surprise tactics and the garden

path diversionin the first pare are used a series of negative evaluation but then, in the second part, the reader is taken bysurprise and it is presented what the author is saying from a different point of view with far more positiveevaluations.

Sometimes a writer or a speaker creates or presents a narrative which draws the reader in and positively invitesthem to agree with it. This is known as the “garden path” technique, a metaphor describing how the reader isled along a false trail, from which they must then return in order to take the correct one.

3.3 problem - solution

In the problem - solution method of persuasion, the persuader first proposes and outlines a supposed problemand suggests that he or she has the solution to the problem

3.3.1 the simple problem - solution model

The problem is more or less implicit in the solution offered by the slogan sponsor:”it’s not racist to impose limits on immigration”

The slogan asserts that the problem is immigration,

The solution is to impose limits. The solution is evaluated positively “it’s not racist”. In more extended cases the problem is usually given first and then the author goes on to offer us his or her solution. This solution is usually accompanied by a positive evaluation.

In a still more sophisticated version, the author outlines the problem then offers a preliminary solution which s/he goes on to reject, evaluating it as wrong or inadequate or unjust. The author then goes on to suggest an alternative solution, which s/he then evaluates as correct, satisfactory or fair:

• problem
• solution 1
• evaluation (negative)
• solution 2
• evaluation 2 (positive)
• conclusion

The speaker or writer introduces, first of all, his or her principle argument in terms of a hypothesis. The following sections of the discourse then provide evidence to support