27.2602, Review: Discourse; Socioling: Săftoiu, Neagu, Măda (2015)

Tue Jun 14 18:08:31 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2602. Tue Jun 14 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2602, Review: Discourse; Socioling: Săftoiu, Neagu, Măda (2015)

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Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:08:11
From: Sibo Chen [siboc at sfu.ca]
Subject: Persuasive Games in Political and Professional Dialogue

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5250.html

EDITOR: Răzvan  Săftoiu
EDITOR: Maria-Ionela  Neagu
EDITOR: Stanca  Măda
TITLE: Persuasive Games in Political and Professional Dialogue
SERIES TITLE: Dialogue Studies 26
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Persuasion is an omnipresent phenomenon. From advertisements to political
speeches, our daily lives are surrounded by persuasive communications. As a
key phenomenon of language use, persuasion has been studied by both linguists
and rhetoricians. Although many scholars used to consider persuasion as
instrumental, unidirectional, and agonistic, recently there has been a shift
of research paradigm, in which persuasion is re-defined as bidirectional and
inherently dialogic (Bakhtin, 1986).

This dialogic turn in rhetoric studies has been well captured in “Persuasive
Games in Political and Professional Dialogue”. As the editors suggest in the
introduction, dialogic rhetoric is built upon the observation that “speakers
are no longer interested in defeating the other and proving him/her wrong, but
in learning from the other” (p. vii). Within the new paradigm of dialogic
rhetoric, the research focus has been shifted from the speaker (and his/her
strategies to influence the listener) to co-authorship. That is how persuasive
texts are generated through the conversations between interlocutors.

This volume sets out to cover the burgeoning research on how persuasion
unfolds in political and professional settings. One favored methodological
approach in the volume is pragma-dialectics. This approach regards
argumentation as a part of critical discussion that aims at resolving a
difference in opinion through negotiations. Guided by this approach, the
volume discusses how ethos and pathos have preceded logos in the post-modern
era, with the connection between argumentation and identity construction
becoming the primary focus within “persuasive games”.

Following a brief introduction, the volume is split into two parts of 6
chapters each. Part I addresses persuasive strategies in political dialogues.
This part begins with Chapter 1’s theoretical review of grammatical and
rhetorical issues in persuasion research, which demonstrates that the
integration of both perspectives is needed in fully revealing the persuasive
force of utterances. Chapter 2 then explores the role of the burden of proof
in constructing political accountability. The chapter proposes the adoption of
a procedural view of the burden of proof, in which standpoints emerging from
political argumentation are tested in confrontation, opening, argumentative,
and concluding stages. Political debates during election campaigns are the
research focus of the following three chapters. Chapter 3 examines
pre-electoral TV debates by defining them as (1) a ritual dispute governed by
a rhetorical order and (2) a communication channel between electors and
stakeholders. The chapter also analyzes the differences among electoral
arguments appealing to logos, pathos and ethos. Chapter 4 describes the
function of meta-discoursal devices (e.g., hedges, boosters, attitude markers,
and transition markers) through analyzing Barack Obama’s discourse during the
third 2012 American presidential debate. The chapter’s analysis shows that
meta-discoursal devices are important linguistic tools in creating Obama’s
dialogical interaction with the audience and in establishing his trustworthy
ethos. Chapter 5 also focuses on the 2012 American presidential debates.
Drawing on Isabela and Norman Fairclough’s (2012) approach to political
discourse analysis, the chapter identifies the various practical arguments
used by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in constructing their respective ethos.
One important theoretical implication from the chapter is that political
debates can be understood as a combination of deliberation and persuasion and
they need to be studied from an audience-oriented perspective. Chapter 6
explores the epistemic marker “Eu cred că” (I think) in Romanian by comparing
its use in political debates and in daily conversations. The chapter’s
corpus-based analysis successfully demonstrates that in political debates “Eu
cred că” is able to keep, extend or switch the personal epistemic center.
These manipulations weaken the connection between an opinion and its author,
which makes an argument more acceptable to its opponent. 

Part II switches the analytical focus to persuasive strategies in professional
dialogues. Following Toulmin’s (2003) model of argumentation, Chapter 7
compares arguments in two different professional settings, a Romanian company
and a Romanian and Belgian joint company. The chapter’s analysis shows that
although arguments occur in both settings for reaching professional decisions,
their types, forms, and functions are culturally sensitive. Chapter 8
investigates how speakers advocate their positions and defend their
standpoints during mediated professional interactions. Through the analysis of
“virtual networking communications” in a Romanian company, the chapter
proposes that argumentation is a form of contextualized speech behavior guided
by institutional preconditions and identifiable moves. Chapter 9 addresses how
identity construction functions as a major persuasive strategy during police
crisis negotiations. Viewing identity from a social constructivist
perspective, the chapter discusses how persuasion is strategically linked to
doing identity work. Chapter 10 returns to the topic of intercultural
communication by examining how discourse markers are used in arguments by
native and non-native English speakers. The chapter’s empirical research shows
that compared with non-natives, native speakers of English tend to use a wider
range of discourse markers for various communicative purposes. Another finding
is that disagreement discourse markers are less frequent than agreement ones
in intercultural professional settings. Chapter 11 explores persuasive
strategies adopted by banks to maintain shareholders’ confidence during the
current economic-financial crisis. Based on both qualitative and quantitative
analyses, the chapter demonstrates how the three rhetorical appeals, ethos,
pathos, and logos are adopted in various ways to construct desired corporate
images. Following the tradition of social semiotics, Chapter 12 identifies the
linguistic and visual tools of persuasion in a photo exhibition on domestic
violence organized by the Council of Europe. 

EVALUATION

Regardless of the various topics under analysis, the notion that persuasion is
inherently dialogic is addressed throughout the volume, with a couple of
chapters offering detailed theoretical discussions on how rhetoric studies
would benefit from an audience-oriented perspective. This theoretical insight
is complemented by the chapters adopting pragma-dialectics as their main
analytical framework. Such methodological unity constitutes the second
underlying theme in the volume. Overall, the focus on dialogic rhetoric is a
definite strength of the volume as a whole, which deserves to be emphasized
since it has theoretical implications for the entire field of rhetoric
studies. While most studies within the volume have embraced pragma-dialectics,
they are also able to accommodate a couple of other approaches to
argumentation research (e.g., critical discourse analysis, close textual
analysis, and social semiotics). This diversity is another strength of the
volume as it demonstrates the potential of building valuable connections among
existing approaches to discourse analysis.

Yet, those unfamiliar with dialogic rhetoric and its theoretical premises will
find the current volume difficult to read. The volume would have benefited
from a longer introduction in which the emergence of dialogic rhetoric is
addressed more comprehensively. Moreover, the book’s challenge for newcomers
of rhetoric studies is also caused by the considerable gaps between the topics
discussed in consecutive chapters. For instance, there is no discussion on the
topic of intercultural argumentation in Part I while it suddenly becomes the
focus of a couple of chapters in Part II. Providing thematic summaries at the
beginning of each part would have benefited those wishing to familiarize
themselves with dialogic rhetoric.

Nevertheless, the  weaknesses noted above do not reduce the value of the
volume by any means. For both both newcomers and more established scholars in
dialogue studies, a close reading of the volume will be a rewarding
experience. In sum, “Persuasive Games in Political and Professional Dialogue”
is a timely contribution to persuasion research and its central argument of
persuasion as inherently dialogic should be taken seriously by scholars
working with argumentative discourse. 

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (C. Emerson & M.
Holquist eds., V. W. McGee trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2012). Political discourse analysis: A
method for advanced students. New York: Routledge.

Toulmin, S. (2003). The uses of argument (revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sibo Chen is a PHD candidate in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University. He received his MA in Applied Linguistics from the Department of
Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada. His major research interests are
language and communication, critical discourse analysis, and genre theories.

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