A Multimodal Analysis Of Persuasion In Persuasive Business Texts

Public speaking and business presentation is one of the most important means for modern companies,in particular,IT companies,to promote their new products,service,ideas and concepts and communicate with their customers.However,little linguistic attention has been given to the multimodal persuasion in business presentations.The speakers of the business presentations make use of multiple resources and apply a bunch of semiotic modes to deliver information to the audience,to persuade and convince them to buy their products and service.Therefore,it is of both linguistic and practical significance to conduct the study of persuasion in business presentations in a multimodal approach.This paper aims to probe into the following research questions:(1)What persuasive strategies can be identified in persuasive business presentations by using an MDA approach?(2)How do different semiotic modes orchestrate to create a persuasive message?(3)What exactly makes the persuasive business presentations effective? Specifically,is it the choice of persuasive strategies affects persuasion more directly?In order to answer the above three research questions,this thesis conducts a systematic multimodal analysis of the use of persuasive strategies in professional business texts,exemplified by a case study of the Apple Event presentations.The focus of the multimodal analysis in this thesis lies on four semiotic modes: lexis,intonation,gestures and head movements.The term “lexis”,as used in this study,refers to lexical resources,or the particular vocabulary choice that a speaker makes.Intonation is frequently defined as vibrations in pitch that make up a pitch contour.The approach adopted for intonation in this paper is “Discourse Intonation”(DI),which sees intonation as a tool facilitating the flow of discourse and helping the negotiation process involved in every communicative interaction(Brazil,1997).Gestures are comprehended as “visible action when it is used as an utterance or as part of an utterance”(Kenton,2004: 7).In addition,three programs are utilized for the multimodal analysis: the annotation tool ELAN(http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/)and VLC video player,and the phonetic analysis tool PRAAT(http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat).After systematic and detailed qualitative analysis of the four semiotic modes and persuasive expressions,the findings are as follows:(1)The speakers in business presentations orchestrate lexis,intonation,gestures and head movements in multimodal ensembles to convey persuasion,in this sense,five persuasive strategies has been classified: anticipation of responses,attention getting,emphasis,evaluation and rapport.(2)The result of the analysis indicates that persuasion can be considered multimodal in the business presentations,and the excerpts with persuasive activity feature high modal coherence,specifically,the semiotic modes work coherently to achieve the mutual communicative goal,and they do not contradict with each other.(3)Effective multimodal communication in business presentations is not only a question of quantity,but also of quality.A varied and balanced use of modes seems to be beneficial,and increasing the number of semiotic modes will not necessarily make the presentation more effective,unless these modes can be used coherently.These findings have direct pedagogical implications,specifically,courses on business English should devote enough attention to the mastering and application of a variety of modes.And this study may pave the ground for the multimodal persuasion study in other genres.