Rhetorics of Invitation and Refusal in Terry Tempest Williams\u27s The Open Space of Democracy

This essay aims to break through an impasse in scholarship about the uses and limits of invitational rhetoric for social change. After analyzing the arguments about invitational approaches to communication, the essay focuses on a case (concerning freedom of expression after September 11) wherein invitations to listen have been refused. In examining the refusal stage of the invitational encounter, I find that what interlocutors chose to do after being refused is as important as the gesture of invitation itself. The choice to publicize refusals to listen, for example, reveals previously unconsidered ways that invitational rhetoric succeeds in getting marginalized points of view heard, and reinvigorating democratic practice. Using the example of Terry Tempest Williams\u27s book The Open Space of Democracy, the online journal she kept during her book tour, and student activism surrounding her campus visit at Florida Gulf State University, I examine ways out of binary constructions of rhetorical modes in their conceptual, isolated forms, and into studying the dynamic ecologies of modes like invitational rhetoric

Exhortation and sympathy in the Paul's Cross Jeremiads

This article considers affective rhetoric by examining the idea of exhortation. Appealing to the emotions in sacred rhetoric was not a strategy opposed to reasoned argument (as it often figures in secular rhetoric); rather, feelings of love for God and sympathy for one’s fellow Christians were among the virtues that preachers sought to rouse in their hearers. Nor were the emotions and the reason rigidly separated in homiletic theories; the preacher persuaded through argument, rhetorical figures and the vehemence that his own spiritual conviction created. These links between argument, example and affection in persuasion are best demonstrated in the exhortation, which uses all the resources that the preacher had at his disposal to move his hearers towards godliness. One of the most significant means of persuasion was for the preacher to create a sympathetic bond between himself and the hearers. He addressed them as thinking and feeling members of a Church in which they all shared an interest. This aspect of affective rhetoric is best seen in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiads, a sermon genre particularly associated with exhortation and characterised by vehement appeals to a sense of common purpose

A multimodal approach to persuasion in oral presentations : the case of conference presentations, research dissemination talks and product pitches

Esta tesis presenta un estudio multimodal y etnográfico del uso de estrategias persuasivas en tres géneros orales: presentaciones en conferencias, charlas de divulgación científica, y presentaciones de productos. Estos géneros comparten un importante componente persuasivo: los tres se dirigen a una audiencia tratando de convencerles del valor de un producto, servicio, o investigación. Sin embargo, se usan en dos contextos profesionales diferentes: el académico y el económico, por lo que cabe esperar que consigan su propósito comunicativo de forma diferente. Por otra parte, recientes estudios muestran como distintos discursos, tienden a adoptar cada vez más rasgos promocionales (promocionalización del discurso). En vista de ello, es factible establecer como hipótesis que los tres géneros están relacionados interdiscursivamente, y un estudio multimodal y etnográfico del uso de la persuasión en dichos géneros puede ayudar a clarificar las relaciones existentes entre ellos, así como sus diferencias.This thesis is a multimodal and ethnographic study of the use of persuasive strategies in three oral genres conference presentations, research dissemination talks and product pitches. These presentations share a strong persuasive component in their communicative purpose: the three of them address an audience to convince them of the value of a product, a service or a piece of research. However, they are used in business and academia by different discourse communities in different contexts, and therefore they can be expected to achieve their communicative goals in different ways. In addition, research suggests that there is a trend towards promotionalization of different discourses, among which academic discourse is included. In view of this, I hypothesize that these three genres are intertextually and interdiscursively related, and that a multimodal and ethnographic study of the use of persuasion in them can help to shed some light on these relationships and differences

Persuasiveness of social robot ‘Nao’ based on gaze and proximity

Social Robots have widely infiltrated the retail and public space. Mainly, social robots are being utilized across a wide range of scenarios to influence decision making, disseminate information, and act as a signage mechanism, under the umbrella of Persuasive Robots or Persuasive Technology. While there have been several studies in the afore-mentioned area, the effect of non-verbal behaviour on persuasive abilities is generally unexplored. Therefore, in this research, we report whether two key non-verbal attributes, namely proximity and gaze, can elicit persuasively, compliance, and specific personality appeals. For this, we conducted a 2 (eye gaze) x 2 (proximity) between-subjects experiment where participants viewed a video-based scenario of the Nao robot. Our initial results did not reveal any significant results based on the non-verbal attributes. However, perceived compliance and persuasion were significantly correlated with knowledge, responsiveness, and trustworthiness. In conclusion, we discuss how the design of a robot could make it more convincing as extensive marketing and brand promotion companies could use robots to enhance their advertisement operations

Effectiveness and efficiency in international public speaking: when global English meets globalised cultures

The persistent human attempt to succeed in communication and optimise the efforts in doing so find its origin in the ancient rhetoric and it sees its most recent forms in disciplines which apparently are not related to linguistics, such as organisational business communication, or economics. However, these disciplines share a common feature: they share strong interest for global communication. The goal of any information-processing device is to find a solution; efficiency consists in finding it at the minimal cost. Effectiveness is the degree to which the discourse has an impact on the situation and so forwards one’s chances of reaching one’s goals. Public speaking in an international context is a benchmark for testing both the effectiveness and the efficiency of speech communication in English, among native and non-native sujects. This short contribution underlines the relevance of fundamental components of public speaking, such as speech construction (opening, body, closing of the speech; working outline, formal outline, key-word outline), delivery (body language; visual aids), argumentation (informative vs persuasive speaking; patterns of reasoning; developing evidence and proofs). The results of our analysis will bring to further observations on the role of global English in international public speaking

Gesture based persuasive interfaces for public ambient displays

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Informática 2º Semestre, 2011/2012This Master thesis studies how Public Ambient Displays (PAD) can be used as a tool to achieve behaviour change, through persuasive technology. In order to reach the goals of the thesis, an interactive public ambient display system called Motion-based Ambient Interactive Display (MAID) was developed. MAID is driven to motivate behaviour changes regarding domestic energy consumption, through a persuasive game interface based on gesture recognition technology. The developed prototype guides players through the different rooms of a house, where they have to find out what is wrong and practice the correct actions to save energy, using similar gestures to the ones they would use in real life to achieve the same goals. The system provides feedback regarding the consequences of each action, in order to make users aware of the consequences of their actions. The implementation of MAID is based on a purpose built, highly configurable and modular framework. It allows the administrator to fine tune and tweak the application to the necessities of the setup location constraints, by adjusting basic display properties, change image content or even modify the scripted gameplay itself. The scripted game system is flexible enough to allow the repurposing of the framework, beyond the previously defined theme, for future studies. The MAID was subjected to user testing, in order to show that it is possible to create a persuasive PAD interface, using seamless interaction methods, with the currently available technology, and use it to spread awareness of a cause, leading to behaviour change.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - project DEAP (PTDC/AAC-AMB/104834/2008); CITI/DI/FCT/UNL (PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/201

Survival of the most memorable : Darwin’s textual afterlife through rhetoric in On the Origin of Species

The unassuming Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution. However, one reason why Charles Darwin specifically appears as the figurehead for evolution, and not somebody else, comes from his rhetorical endeavour to create a textual afterlife for himself. Creating a personal afterlife for yourself within your written works is a trait that scholars have observed as a goal within many literary poets, authors, and scholars of the 19th century. Darwin, apparently, also imbued himself into his writings, especially On The Origin of Species, to create his own textual afterlife, one that would survive the other evolutionists of his era. Darwin survived by creating his own textual afterlife through the rhetorical elements of identification with his audiences and transcendence, concepts theorised by the 20th Century rhetorician, Kenneth Burke, strategies that Burke argued were the most fundamental to persuasion. I will show how Darwin survives the other evolutionists by creating his own textual afterlife that would connect to and exist in the collective memory of not only his contemporary Victorians, but also generations of people who would come cross Darwin and his theory of evolution.peer-reviewe

Multimodal enactment of characters in conference presentations

In academic oral genres such as conference presentations, speakers resort to more than words to convey meaning. Research also suggests that persuasion, an important element of the communicative purpose of conference presentations, is frequently achieved through a combination of semiotic modes. Therefore, a skilful orchestration of these modes can be considered key to achieving effective communication in this genre. However, our understanding of persuasion has often focused on specific elements of the message considered in isolation and mainly from the linguistic perspective. Relatively little attention has been paid to the overall persuasive effect achieved by the complex multimodal ensemble. This study approaches the analysis of persuasive strategies in conference presentations combining multimodal discourse analysis and ethnographic methods. It focuses on a particular attention-getting technique: enactment of characters, or acting the part of a person that is being referred to. Our analysis shows how it is achieved through the orchestration of different modes such as words, intonation, gestures, head movements, gaze and facial expression