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Title:

Modalități de persuadare și efectul perlocuționar în discursul politic

Author:
Publication: Aspecte ale dinamicii limbii române actuale. Actele colocviului Catedrei de Limba Română, 27-28 noiembrie 2002, II, Section Pragmastilistică
ISBN:973-575-825-3
Editors:Gabriela Pană Dindelegan
Publisher:Editura Universității din București
Place:București
Year:
Abstract:[Means of achieving persuasion and perlocutionary effects in political speeches]
The purpose of the present paper was to analyze the way politicians use language in campaigns in order to achieve their purpose, i.e. to be elected. My analysis revolved around the concepts of persuasion and perlocutionary effect.
Political speeches were seen as ostensive-inferential communicative acts, in which a dialogue between presidential candidates and voters was established. The response of the audience was materialized in their votes.
The basis for this analysis was the principle of relevance.
It is true that pragmatists have also formulated other principles that are at work in order to generate adequate communication. However, the principle of relevance appears to be the all-encompassing principle in all communicative situations, because even if other principles are observed, communication fails if the information presented to the audience is irrelevant, that is the processing effort required is greater than the contextual effects obtained. Therefore, only relevant information leads to complete and successful communication.
Relevance is closely connected with persuasion, because, no matter how good orators the candidates may be, no matter how they structure their political speeches, persuasion cannot be achieved if the message itself is irrelevant for voters. The intended perlocutionary effect is triggered by the relevance of the messages, hence by persuasion.
Any political campaign is a battle of words. As a rule, candidates who succeed in communicating relevant new information get elected, others do not.
Another interesting point analyzed in this paper refers to the way in which candidates construct their speeches, and this mostly concerned the ideological elements embedded in speeches. Therefore, I demonstrated the way in which different levels of speech structure are used in order to achieve persuasion. The most important turned out to be the lexical and the rhetorical level.
The lexical level is crucial in any political speech, since words embody ideological messages. The lexicon used underlies the main negative and positive themes of political speeches. The word counts performed demonstrated that, by and large, positive themes and words generate persuasion and lead to the intended perlocutionary effects, whereas negative language does not.
This paper has attempted a comparative analysis of speeches delivered by C.V. Tudor and Ion Iliescu, on the one hand, and Al Gore and George W. Bush, on the other hand. The discussion emphasized the fact that aggressive behaviour and language, and irrelevant messages are a weak point in a presidential campaign.
This paper has been an attempt to demonstrate on a given corpus that political speeches are ostensive-inferential acts of communication. It also showed that the information presented must be relevant in order for persuasion and intended perlocutionary effect to be achieved. The relationship between those three elements – relevance, persuasion and perlocutionary effect – is an important factor without which no presidential campaign can reach its purpose: if the information transmitted by candidates is irrelevant, if the processing effort required on behalf of the audience is greater than the contextual effects it yields, then persuasion is not obtained and the perlocutionary effect turns out to be an unintended one: the respective candidate is not elected.
Language: Romanian
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Citations to this publication: 4

1Răzvan SăftoiuSplit voices in political discourseLD, 5 (3), 430-4482015
4Luminița Hoarță-CărăușuUn aspect al morfosintaxei textelor religioase din secolul al XVI-lea: construcția pasivăTDR, II, 269-2782010pdf
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0Luminița Hoarță-CărăușuStrategii persuasive în discursul politic românesc actualRom. major.2007pdf
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0Marina BelousLes noms propres dans le discours politiqueANADISS, 2, 522006pdf

References in this publication: 1

16Steven PinkerThe Language Instinct
How the Mind Creates Language
Harper Collins / Penguin1994, 2007, 2010

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