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An Intercultural Analysis of Meta-discourse Markers as Persuasive Power in Chinese and American Political Speeches

Received: 8 September 2016     Accepted: 10 October 2016     Published: 18 November 2016
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Abstract

Meta-discourse markers play a vital role in organizing the text, showing the presence of the speaker, and engaging the audience, thus they become an important aspect of persuasive power in public speeches. Based on a corpus of 60 political speeches collected from the internet, this study exams (a) how meta-discourse markers help to realize persuasive function, (b) what is the general preference in the use of meta-discourse markers in American and Chinese political speeches respectively, and (c) how cultural factors influence the choice of persuasive strategy. Quantitative analysis indicates that American speeches feature markedly more meta-discourse than Chinese speeches. Textual analysis further reveals that the difference of the two sub-corpora in the achievement of logical appeal, credible appeal, and affective appeal. These results are then discussed in terms of linguistic difference and culturally preferred rhetorical strategy.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 4, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13
Page(s) 207-219
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2016. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Meta-discourse Markers, Persuasive Power, Political Speeches

References
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[2] Crismore, A., & Farnsworth, R., 1989. Darwin and his readers: Exploring interpersonal metadiscourse as a dimension of ethos. Rhetoric Review, 8 (1), 91-112.
[3] Vande K., William J., 1985. Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication 36, 63–94.
[4] Hyland, K., 1998. Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of pragmatics, 30 (4), 437-455.
[5] Halliday, M. A., 1994. Functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
[6] Hyland, K., Tse, Polly, 2004. Metadiscourse in academic writing: a reappraisal. Applied Linguistics 25 (2), 156–177.
[7] Hyland, K., 2000. Hedges, boosters and lexical invisibility: Noticing modifiers in academic texts. Language Awareness, 9 (4), 179-197.
[8] Bunton, D., 1999. The use of higher level metatext in Ph. D theses. English for Specific Purposes, 18, S41-S56.
[9] Hyland, K., 1996. Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied linguistics, 17 (4), 433-454.
[10] Crismore A, Markkanen R, Steffensen M S. 1993, Metadiscourse in persuasive writing a study of texts written by American and Finnish university students. Written communication, 10 (1): 39-71.
[11] Hyland, K., 2002. Authority and invisibility: Authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of pragmatics, 34 (8), 1091-1112.
[12] Mauranen, A., 1993. Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English for specific Purposes, 12 (1), 3-22.
[13] Neff-van Aertselaer, J., & Dafouz-Milne, E., 2008. Argumentation patterns in different languages: An analysis of metadiscourse markers in English and Spanish texts. Developing contrastive pragmatics interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives, 87-102.
[14] Dafouz-Milne, E., 2008. The pragmatic role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in the construction and attainment of persuasion: A cross-linguistic study of newspaper discourse. Journal of pragmatics, 40 (1), 95-113.
[15] Mur-Dueñas, P., 2011. An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and in Spanish. Journal of pragmatics, 43 (12), 3068-3079.
[16] Hu, G., & Cao, F., 2011. Hedging and boosting in abstracts of applied linguistics articles: A comparative study of English-and Chinese-medium journals. Journal of pragmatics, 43 (11), 2795-2809.
[17] Mu, C., 2010. A Contrastive Analysis of Metadiscourse in Chinese and English Editorials. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice, 4, 006.
[18] Valero-Garcés, C., 1996. Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Spanish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes, 15 (4), 279-294.
[19] Hinds, John, 1987. Reader versus writer responsibility: a new typology. In: Connor, U., Kaplan, Robert, B. (Eds.), Writing across Languages: Analyses of L2 Texts. Addison-Wesley, Reading, pp. 141–152.
[20] Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A., 2001. Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological review, 108 (2), 291.
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  • APA Style

    Hongyu Mai. (2016). An Intercultural Analysis of Meta-discourse Markers as Persuasive Power in Chinese and American Political Speeches. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 4(6), 207-219. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13

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    ACS Style

    Hongyu Mai. An Intercultural Analysis of Meta-discourse Markers as Persuasive Power in Chinese and American Political Speeches. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2016, 4(6), 207-219. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13

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    AMA Style

    Hongyu Mai. An Intercultural Analysis of Meta-discourse Markers as Persuasive Power in Chinese and American Political Speeches. Int J Lang Linguist. 2016;4(6):207-219. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13,
      author = {Hongyu Mai},
      title = {An Intercultural Analysis of Meta-discourse Markers as Persuasive Power in Chinese and American Political Speeches},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {4},
      number = {6},
      pages = {207-219},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20160406.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20160406.13},
      abstract = {Meta-discourse markers play a vital role in organizing the text, showing the presence of the speaker, and engaging the audience, thus they become an important aspect of persuasive power in public speeches. Based on a corpus of 60 political speeches collected from the internet, this study exams (a) how meta-discourse markers help to realize persuasive function, (b) what is the general preference in the use of meta-discourse markers in American and Chinese political speeches respectively, and (c) how cultural factors influence the choice of persuasive strategy. Quantitative analysis indicates that American speeches feature markedly more meta-discourse than Chinese speeches. Textual analysis further reveals that the difference of the two sub-corpora in the achievement of logical appeal, credible appeal, and affective appeal. These results are then discussed in terms of linguistic difference and culturally preferred rhetorical strategy.},
     year = {2016}
    }
    

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    AB  - Meta-discourse markers play a vital role in organizing the text, showing the presence of the speaker, and engaging the audience, thus they become an important aspect of persuasive power in public speeches. Based on a corpus of 60 political speeches collected from the internet, this study exams (a) how meta-discourse markers help to realize persuasive function, (b) what is the general preference in the use of meta-discourse markers in American and Chinese political speeches respectively, and (c) how cultural factors influence the choice of persuasive strategy. Quantitative analysis indicates that American speeches feature markedly more meta-discourse than Chinese speeches. Textual analysis further reveals that the difference of the two sub-corpora in the achievement of logical appeal, credible appeal, and affective appeal. These results are then discussed in terms of linguistic difference and culturally preferred rhetorical strategy.
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Author Information
  • College of Foreign Languages, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

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