An Analysis Of Persuasiveness In Prospectuses Of "Project 985" Key Universities In China

Under the context of globalization, many fields, such as education domain, have become marketized or commodified. Many genres in education domain are influenced by this trend of globalization. As one of the genres in education domain, university prospectus is used not only to give readers some basic information of the university but also to persuade them that the university is an eminent one, and thus to attract talent students to apply for the university.Based upon 39 prospectuses of Chinese“Project 985”key universities, the present study explores the persuasiveness in university prospectuses. Following Aristotle?s (2007) three modes of persuasion, the thesis categorizes the linguistic means of persuasion as those concerning ethos, pathos, and logos. Moreover, it attempts to explain, by means of Verschueren?s (1999) Linguistic Adaptation Theory, the reasons why the specific linguistic means of persuasion are chosen to embody the three modes of persuasion. Finally, it conducts a questionnaire survey to investigate the effects of persuasiveness in university prospectuses on the readers.Through the analysis it can be found that the choice of the specific linguistic means of persuasion is the process of adaptation to social psychology. In addition, it can be concluded, from the result of the questionnaire survey, that the use of linguistic means of persuasion has an important impact on readers in terms of the impression of the universities.The present study explores the influence of globalization towards the university prospectus genre from a new perspective. It is hoped that it can shed some light on further studies.