Persuasion in Social Speeches

Abstract

The study of the political speeches has drawn the attention of scholars since its revelation up to the present day. Many scholars have attempted to study specific features of it. One of these features that has been at the core of interest is persuasion. This research was aimed to elaborate on the concept of persuasion in the political speeches and to find out the persuasive strategies used in the speeches of queen Rania (queen of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan) The study has confined itself to three main objectives. These are discussing the concept of persuasion as manifested in the political speeches, Identifying the persuasive strategies used, and naming the most common and the least common ones. By using a model based on persuasive communication theory and other related concepts, researcher analyzed the data using quantitative-qualitative research method. The analysis started with a comprehensive reading of queen Rania speech and then identifying the tokens of persuasive strategies. The results were put in numerical form and discussed both quantitively and qualitatively. The study findings show that persuasion is one of the basic concepts in the political speeches due to the nature of this text which aimed at persuading people to follow the righteous course of action and belief. It is also found that all the persuasive strategies included in the model appeared in the text under study. Finally, the study revealed that metaphor is the most commonly used persuasive strategies while personification is the least.