A Study On The Persuasive Function Of Corporate Responses At Hearings From The Perspective Of Metadiscourse

Hearing is a legitimate process for shaping government policies.Hearing discourses are rhetorical in nature as they are logic required,speaker focused and audience targeted.As the purpose of the corporate representatives who are summoned to hearings due to corporate scandals is to seek ways to convince audience,save corporate reputation and restore trust,metadiscourse,as a language resource,is frequently adopted by them to organize statements,express the stance and overtly engage the audience at the hearings.Hence it is of great value to study how metadiscourse resources are used at hearings and how they help companies at hearings achieve persuasive purposes.This study takes Facebook’s two congressional hearings as examples to explore the persuasive function of hearing responses by Facebook’s founder Zuckerberg from the perspective of metadiscourse.Drawing on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse as the categorization system for identifying metadiscourse and Aristotle’s rhetorical persuasion theory as the framework for persuasive function analysis,this study tries to address the following research questions: 1)What are the distribution features of the metadiscourse resources adopted in Zuckerberg’s responses at hearings? 2)What persuasive strategies are adopted by Zuckerberg in terms of different types of metadiscourse resources? 3)How are these strategies adopted to help Zuckerberg achieve his persuasive purposes?Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used and the research comes to the following results : 1)All the ten types of metadisourse resources are employed by Zuckerberg,among which self mentions,transitions and engagement markers are the most dominant ones.From the perspective of metadiscourse categories,interactional features are found more preferred than interactive features.These findings indicate that oral communication such as dialogue at hearings involves a lot of attempts to present positions and conduct interaction with hearers and that the speaker at the hearing spends less effort to organize the structure of their utterances.2)All three persuasive strategies are found adopted by the speaker.In particular,rational strategies are used to realize coherence facilitated by transitions and to appeal to logic by adopting frame markers.When it comes to emotional strategies,engagement markers,attitude markers and self mentions help Zuckerberg enhance listeners’ confidence in Facebook and promote consensus with them.As regards moral strategies,Zuckerberg constantly uses self-mentions in making reflections and apologies to show his honesty and integrity,hedges to shape a cautious personality and boosters to show his firm beliefs.3)Relying on these persuasion strategies,Zuckerberg mainly achieves three persuasive purposes.Specifically,rational strategies mainly help him clarify doubts;emotional strategies help repair public trust,while the use of moral strategies help Facebook build a positive corporate image.This study examines corporate hearing responses from the perspective of metadiscourse in an attempt to enrich the research of metadiscourse and promote the understanding of corporate discourse from the perspective of persuasion.The study also hopes to provide inspirations for companies to use persuasive strategies effectively.