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.
