Implicit strategies aimed at persuading the audience in public debates
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri is professor of General Linguistics at Roma Tre University. His main research interests are in the fields of general linguistics, Japanese linguistics, Italian linguistics, persuasive communication, language and the brain. He is the founder and director of the Permanent Observatory on Advertising and Propaganda oppp.it and of the project
IMPAQTS: Implicit Manipulation in Politics – Quantitatively Assessing the Tendentiousness of Speeches (Italian Government Project of Relevant National Interest 2017, n. 2017STJCE9) –https://impaqts.it/ .
Abstract
Starting from the assumption that implicit strategies like presuppositions and implicatures can be used to reduce the tendency to critical reaction by addressees of linguistic utterances, which qualifies such strategies as useful persuasive devices, the paper also recalls that for this reason they are a typical ingredient of advertisement and propaganda (Section 1). Reduced epistemic vigilance effected by implicit linguistic packaging is especially useful to smuggle questionable contents into the target’s minds. Specific implicit strategies can be specialized for specific pragmatic moves, such as conveying opinions, self-praise or the attack of others (Section 2). This includes any questionable selling content and any doubtful argument that, if believed, may give an advantage against a dialectic opponent. In particular, in public debates one does not aim at convincing the opponent, rather at shaping the beliefs of the audience at home. The paper shows (Section 3) how presuppositions and implicatures are used in Italian public (television) debates with exactly this argumentative function. In such contexts the pattern holds even more importantly for face-threatening contents, whose being conveyed explicitly would expose the source to more probable and stronger blame on the part of the public, while implicitness (and more specifically implicatures) can help speakers to convey to the public the opponent-discrediting content of a face-threatening attack, still not counting evidently as offenders.
About the author
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri is professor of General Linguistics at Roma Tre University. His main research interests are in the fields of general linguistics, Japanese linguistics, Italian linguistics, persuasive communication, language and the brain. He is the founder and director of the Permanent Observatory on Advertising and Propaganda oppp.it and of the project IMPAQTS: Implicit Manipulation in Politics – Quantitatively Assessing the Tendentiousness of Speeches (Italian Government Project of Relevant National Interest 2017, n. 2017STJCE9) – https://impaqts.it/.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Pragmatic impairment and COVID-19
- Implicit strategies aimed at persuading the audience in public debates
- The total speech act: Infelicities and cultural variations. The contribution of women anthropologists
- The development of presupposition: Pre-schoolers’ understanding of regret and too
- Illocutionary-act-type sensitivity and discursive sequence: An examination of quotation
- Moorean utterances and the illocutionary dynamics of assertion
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Pragmatic impairment and COVID-19
- Implicit strategies aimed at persuading the audience in public debates
- The total speech act: Infelicities and cultural variations. The contribution of women anthropologists
- The development of presupposition: Pre-schoolers’ understanding of regret and too
- Illocutionary-act-type sensitivity and discursive sequence: An examination of quotation
- Moorean utterances and the illocutionary dynamics of assertion
