Browsing by Author "Kopakkala, Jemina"

The aim of this paper is to study the ways of linguistic persuasion in the subgenre of online pet adoption advertisements. More precisely, this paper aims to demonstrate of which metadiscourse markers the persuasion of online pet adoption advertisements is made up. Additionally, this paper seeks to illustrate the connection between the discovered markers of metadiscourse and the three Aristotelean appeals of persuasion known as ethos, pathos, and logos. The material of the study consists of 191 online pet adoption advertisements (30,319 words) featuring dogs and cats, collected from the official websites of six non-profit animal welfare organizations based in the United States. The methodology applied in the study is based on the categorization of metadiscourse markers proposed by Hyland (2005), and both quantitative and qualitative approaches are applied in order to analyze the data. Based on the categorization of Hyland (2005), the markers of metadiscourse present in the material are divided into interactive markers, which guide the reader through the text, and interactional markers of stance and engagement, which include the reader as part of the argument. The results of the analysis show that the linguistic choices made by the writer contribute to the persuasiveness of the advertisements via various interpersonal features. These features include, in particular, the frequent use of the interactional stance markers of boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions, as well as the interactional engagement markers of reader pronouns, directives, personal asides, and questions. Further, in terms of the interactive markers, the defining features of the subgenre relate particularly to the use of transitions, frame markers, and evidentials. The analysis of the discovered metadiscourse features in terms of their connection to the modes of persuasion appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos, in turn shows that while all of the appeals are utilized, a trend exists according to which online pet adoption advertisements primarily seem to utilize the affective appeal of pathos as a way of persuading the reader. All in all, the present study does not only provide a new perspective to the virtually non-existent yet important persuasion research topic of online pet adoption advertisements, but it contributes to the growing pool of research on metadiscourse and rhetoric, as well.