Persuasion In Business Discourse: A Rhetorical Analysis

With the development of global economy and China's entry into WTO, people aremuch more involved in business activities. Business language is widely and frequently usednot only in professional activities, but also in daily life, thus business discourse is of vitalimportance. Business discourses have many forms, for instance, correspondence, advertising,presentation, marketing etc. One of the functions of business discourses is for persuasion, orin other word, for the purpose of identification through communication. In previous research,although a lot of achievements have been made in business discourse, little has been done inpsychological aspect, such as persuasion, which is the main function of rhetoric and theprinciple purpose of business discourse. The thesis attempts to make a combination, exploringhow persuasion is achieved through rhetorical approach in business discourse. In this paper,qualitative method is employed to analyze the relative data collected in the written businessdiscourse in English in order to see its way in practice.At the beginning of the thesis, there is a brief review of main approaches to businessdiscourse analysis. Then the author attempts to provide a rhetorical approach concerned withcommunicators' psychology and New Rhetoric. The study takes its theoretical resourceprimarily from Ross' perception of persuasion and Brooks' expectancy theory. Analysis onpersuasion and motives in Ross' theory are from the perspective of the addresser, whileanalysis on expectancy in Brooks' theory is from the perspective of the addressee. The twotheories make up a rhetorical mode, which focuses on the rhetorical effects in businessdiscourse from a perspective of the relationship between the addresser and the addressee. Thestudy also adopts identification theory—a theory from the present famous Americanrhetorician Burke. "Identification" is the ultimate purpose in persuasive business discourse.Equipped with the theoretical framework, the thesis aims to analyze persuasion, regarding abusiness discourse as a rhetorical activity. Strategies for identification in business discourseare also presented. The strategies deal with three parts: persuasive approaches, rhetoricalappeals and figures of speech. By giving the analysis on rhetorical strategies in businessdiscourse, the thesis proves that the developed framework is theoretically valid as well as practically feasible.The significance of the study is two-sided: the thesis brings up a new theoreticalapproach—rhetorical approach to business discourse analysis; at the meantime, through thepsychological analysis on persuasion in business discourse, it helps business people toidentify and make good use of the business opportunities in communications and make greaterprofit.