Persuasion

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

Objective: Marital life is the cause of the development of social relations and provides a ground for the exercise of power, from domination to hegemony. The purpose of this study is to investigate the methods of persuasion used by women in the experience of everyday life among married people in Guilan province, Iran.Methods: This research used a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling among 45 married men and women in Guilan province. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data obtained from the interviews.Results: The data analysis revealed 15 basic themes, 7 organizing themes, and 2 global themes. The findings indicate that, in the past, men used social, economic, and psychological dominance against women, in addition to physical dominance. However, in the new society, with women's resistance, such dominance has become negative and illegitimate. Women now accept men's superiority not by force but through internal desire and persuasion. Therefore, today, the exercise of men's power against women has shifted from a state of dominance and asymmetry to a more symmetrical but hegemonic state.Conclusion: In the past, men used more dominance but less authority against women, but today's men use less dominance and more authority. New men's exercise of power is more persuasive, hidden, and corresponding to Rutherford's new masculinity, Connell's hegemonic masculinity, and Bourdieu's symbolic violence.

This paper discusses the use of figures of speech and communicative intentions behind such stylistic choices in British political interviews. By using a qualitative stylistic framework based on the models of Simpson (2004) and Leech and Short (2007), this research investigates the usage of metaphors, similes, and analogies by British politicians between 2009 and 2024. This study has found that such rhetorical devices are strategically utilized to reduce intricacy, create emotional appeals, and command authority. Key findings underline the fact that key metaphors constitute the framing of policies in an accessible and positive light, reinforcement of political positionality through similes, and projection of competence and trust through analogies. This is a very significant lacuna in literature, as almost all previous studies have focused on rhetorical devices in American political speeches rather than British interviews. It tries to show the purposes of such stylistic strategies and allow a bigger understanding of political communication in British contexts to linguists, political strategists, and media analysts. The findings point up the centrality of language in the engendering of public perception and offer insight into the persuasive functions of rhetorical devices in contemporary political discourse.