Grouping Texts to Persuade

Grouping Texts to Persuade

Texts E, CC, H and K all share either a primary or secondary purpose to persuade. Text K is a strong inclusion to this group, as it is an advertisement for a beauty product therefore its primary purpose is to persuade customers to buy their product. It uses an instruction of how to use the product with strong imperatives blended with rich adjectives such as ‘rub the creamy gel into a luxurious lather’ and ‘massage into damp skin. Adding the adjectives with the imperatives, it makes the product sound much more luxurious and desirable. . Another way in which text K uses techniques to persuade, is it uses French lexis like ‘cremé de gel’ that perhaps might evoke connotations of cleanliness, luxuriousness and beauty, because when consumers see French products they might associate it with things like fashion and perfume which is desirable, like Chanel.

Text H is also a strong inclusion to this group as similarly, it uses rich adjectives that the reader cold directly link to the product, like ‘yummy’ and ‘delicious’. However this could also be an attempt of accommodation to target a younger audience, as these lexical choices and bold and colourful graphology suggest it might be targeted towards children, or perhaps parents with young children. The packaging also advertises a game on the back which states it is a ‘family game’, it uses the imperative ‘play tv matchmakers’ which also persuades them to play the game but primarily to actually buy the product.

In contrast, text E is a much weaker inclusion to this group, as it is only a secondary purpose, because it is a transcript of a conversation between a customer and an employee, where one speaker, in this case the customer, has a higher status or more power in the conversation, as the employee wants them to return as a valued customer. Towards the end of the conversation, the employee uses negative face by saying ‘I’m not getting much right today’. This lowers their status as a worker and makes the customer feel more powerful or perhaps more respected, in order for them to maybe visit the shop again. However this is an underlying prompt to persuade the customer without them actually knowing it therefore is only a weak inclusion to persuade.

Text CC is another weak inclusion as it similarly is a conversation but between two friends. The way this text is similar to text E is that there is still one more powerful speaker. Maureen is the more powerful and she uses subtle hints in order to persuade Juliane to try and get the tickets. She says ‘so now we can’t go’, uses emotive lexis which makes Juliane feel guilty and consequently persuades her to try and get the tickets. Maureen’s dominance in the conversation also means that she doesn’t have to actually persuade her with powerful verbs and nouns or use of conversion, as she speaks very little and Juliane is still persuaded by her.