15-SEMLIC-12 15-SEMLIC-22
Linguistic persuasion is generally defined a communicative act intended to create or change the opinions, values, attitudes and beliefs of our interlocutor (e.g. O’Keefe 2002). During this seminar (1) we will explore the processes occurring in our minds and brains when someone uses persuasive language and (2) we will discuss the linguistic structure of a persuasive communicative act. Among others, the focus will be put on the use of specific persuasion techniques such as the use of questions, power words and phrases and a hypnotic language pattern. We will discuss the interpretation of persuasive meaning created in various types of both spoken and written discourse (e.g. political discourse, mass-mediated discourse, etc.) and relate it to the concepts concerned with mentalizing and inferring. We will treat discourse analysis as an analytical approach to the study of pragmatics of human persuasive communication. The most significant ideas explored in the course of the seminar include (1) intuitive inferring and reflective (abstract, hypothetical) reasoning (2) pragmatic implicatures and explicatures, (3) pragmatic contextualism vs. semantic minimalism. To better understand the dynamics of persuasive meaning creation and interpretation, we will discuss the human brain geography. In view of the above, discourse will be treated as the extension of cognitive and affective processing. Students will be encouraged to evaluate the applicability of selected theoretical frameworks through the study of the samples of literary, mass-mediated or political discourse.
- Teacher: Kamila Dębowska-Kozłowska