Persuasive Strategies Used in Religious Argumentative Discourse

Abstract

The main goal of persuasion is to influence, support, and modify people's thoughts and beliefs using linguistic signals (Diyi et al., 2019: 3621). The current study sets itself the task of answering the following questions: (1) What are the most prevalent quasilogical persuasive strategies implemented in religious argumentative discourse? (2) What are the most frequent presentational strategies used in this type of discourse? (3) What are the most common analogical strategies used in religious argumentative discourse? Consequently, the present paper aims at: (1) Identifying the most prevalent quasilogical persuasive strategies used in religious argumentative discourse. (2) Finding out the most frequent presentational strategies used in this type of discourse. (3) Pinpointing the most common analogical strategies implemented in religious argumentative discourse. Accordingly, the study hypothesizes that: (1) Rhetorical questions and cause clauses are the most common quasilogical persuasive strategies implemented in this discourse. (2) Imagery, repetition, and simile are the most frequent presentational strategies used in this type of discourse. (3) Words and proverbs of the ancestors and reminding the audience of the tested values are the most common analogical strategies implemented in religious argumentative discourse. To achieve the aims of this work and test its hypotheses, the paper follows Johnston’s (2008) model of persuasion to arrive at the most prevalent persuasive strategies implemented in religious argumentative discourse. Findings of the analysis validate the above mentioned hypotheses.