Persuasive Discourse

Asbtract The act of persuasion could be seen as an the attempt of one party to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, feelings and intentions, of another by submitting his/her argumentative case. In this working definition (resulting from Simons 1976, Lakoff 1982, Hardin 2010, Mintz et al. 2012) persuasion is understood to be activated through communicative means which involve the use of language. It is deployed through the basic two productive skills of language, i.e. spoken and written although other paralinguistic features may e used (e.g. face grimaces). Research in both fields is being growing. This research aims at recording the persuasive strategies of Greek teenaged students when producing written discourse in English as a foreign language (L2 persuasive writing). In particular, 60 EFL students (varying from 11, to 13 years of age) were engaged to write to their British penfriends an informal letter and attempt to persuade them to read a book they had read. Connor and Lauer's (1985) detailed system of persuasive discourse, was employed to record the persuasive efforts of the participants. It was found that: a) A1 language level students employed more rational persuasive strategies, b) A2 language level students made use of both rational and credibility persuasive strategies, and c) B1 language level students employed more affective persuasive strategies. It is surprising to notice that the higher the language level the more away the students run from the use of rational strategies. The gender variable did not associate statistically to any of the persuasive strategies selected. In addition, rational strategies were mostly associated with assertive speech acts, credibility strategies with directive speech acts while affective strategies were associated with both assertive and directive speech acts. It may be concluded that language level contributes to a high extent to the persuasive differentiation (from logical to more ethos and pathos appeals) and does not associate to the variable 'gender'. The development of the students' language level leads to persuasive strategy differentiation as language mechanisms and linguistic elements that foster persuasiveness are improved and enhance the effectiveness of communication or it is evidence that the students attempt to experiment with the L2.