On Persuasion In Product Launch Presentations Of Apple And Samsung Under The Guidance Of Appraisal Theory

The high-paced development of technology brings upgrades of products.Now the Product Launch Presentation(PLP)has become one of the most common,efficient and important ways for major high-tech companies to promote new products and attract potential customers.PLP is a business speech about new products or services that bridges information gap between producers and consumers before persuading customers into purchase.Such business speech discourse is of great importance but novel.Few scholars have analyzed it from the perspective of linguistics,and the research on the realization of persuasion is even rarer.Based on Martin's Appraisal system,this thesis first analyzes the distribution and frequency of appraisal resources in PLP.It also devotes to finding out how appraisals express presenters' views and stances,and ultimately how appraisals are applied to realize persuasion in each subsystem.This thesis explores the persuasive role of Appraisal resources in PLP discourse,and proposes four suggestions for better employment of them to achieve better persuasive results.Under the guidance of Appraisal Theory,PLP of Apple's iPhone 6,iPhone 6Plus and Samsung's Galaxy S8,S8 Plus are selected as the authentic materials to be annotated by UAM Corpus Tool 3.3.In the corpus,two thousand and one pieces of Appraisal resources are identified.Through the analysis of corpus,the distribution of resources in each subsystem is presented,based on which an analysis is conducted to explore the realization of persuasion in PLP.After the qualitative and quantitative analysis of PLP for four types of phones from Apple and Samsung,conclusions are reached as follows:(1)Appraisal resources are actively adopted in PLP,and resources in Attitude,Engagement and Graduation are relatively evenly distributed.It is found that PLP presenters are more likely to deploy Attitude resources,followed by Graduationand Engagement resources.In Attitude system,presenters tend to employ Appreciation resources to directly express positive stances towards new products when introducing them.In Engagement system,Heteroglossic resources are frequently adopted to create dialogic effect.In Graduation system,presenters have a preference for Force resources to modulate the strength of attitudes and to turn up the emotional influences brought by Attitude resources.(2)Attitude,Engagement and Graduation resources can realize persuasion in PLP.Attitude and Graduation resources can move audience by inviting them to share emotions;Engagement and Graduation resources can walk audience through the logic by triggering audiences' contemplation before persuasion;Attitude,Engagement and Graduation resources enable presenters to build positive images for presenters themselves or companies and to earn audiences' trust.