Power, Persuasion and Manipulation in Specialised Genres: Providing Keys to the Rhetoric of Professional Communities

387 Pages·2017·6.249 MB·English

by  María Ángeles Orts Llopis, Ruth Breeze, Maurizio Gotti

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This volume focuses on the study of linguistic manip- li
ulation, persuasion and power in the written texts of Linguistic Insights
professional communication, to go further into the 227
Studies in Language and Communication
understanding of how they are constructed, inter-
preted, used and exploited in the achievement of
specific goals. Such texts are here contemplated

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from the stance of genre theory, which starts from
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the premise that specialised communities have a i
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high level of rhetorical sophistication, the keys to
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which are offered solely to their members. In particu-
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lar, the book investigates the communicative devices i
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that serve the need of such professions to exert pow- a
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er and manipulation, and to use persuasion. The
perspective adopted in this work does not envisage d
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power simply as a distant, alienated and alienating ae
supremacy from above, but as an everyday, social- n nr
ized and embodied phenomenon. To attain its goal, oe
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the volume brings forth studies on the language of s
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several professions belonging to various specialised ue
fields such as law and arbitration, engineering, eco- ss
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nomics, advertising, business, politics, medicine, eal
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social work, education and the media. ci
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n María Ángeles Orts,
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María Ángeles Orts (University of Murcia, Spain) •i Ruth Breeze &
teaches Professional English, especially in the areas
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of law, economy and business. She has published s Maurizio Gotti (eds)
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extensively on economic and legal lexicon, corrup- e
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tion crimes and gender violence, power and legitima- i
t Power, Persuasion
tion in legal texts, and the translation and interpre- ot
tation of legal genres. G
. and Manipulation
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Ruth Breeze is senior lecturer in English at the Uni-

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versity of Navarra, Spain. Her most recent books are
Corporate Discourse (Bloomsbury Academic 2015) e in Specialised Genres
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and the co-edited volumes Essential Competencies e
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for English-Medium University Teaching (Springer r
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2016) and Evaluation in Media Discourse: European Providing Keys to the Rhetoric
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Perspectives (Peter Lang 2017). R
of Professional Communities
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Maurizio Gotti is Professor of English, Head of the r
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Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and

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Cultures, and Director of the Centre for LSP Research Á

(CERLIS) at the University of Bergamo, Italy. His main M.
areas of investigation are the features and origins of
specialized discourse.
ISBN 978-3-0343-3010-7 g
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www.peterlang.com P
Power, Persuasion and Manipulation
in Specialised Genres
Linguistic Insights
Studies in Language and Communication
Edited by Maurizio Gotti,
University of Bergamo
Volume 227
AdVISORY BOARd
Vijay Bhatia (Hong Kong)
david Crystal (Bangor)
Konrad Ehlich (Berlin / München)
Jan Engberg (Aarhus)
Norman Fairclough (Lancaster)
John Flowerdew (Hong Kong)
Ken Hyland (Hong Kong)
Roger Lass (Cape Town)
Matti Rissanen (Helsinki)
Françoise Salager-Meyer (Mérida, Venezuela)
Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff)
Susan Šarcˇevi´c (Rijeka)
Lawrence Solan (New York)
PETER LANG
Bern • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien
María Ángeles Orts, Ruth Breeze &
Maurizio Gotti (eds)
Power, Persuasion
and Manipulation
in Specialised Genres
Providing Keys to the Rhetoric
of Professional Communities
PETER LANG
Bern • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien
Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
die deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
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is available from The British Library, Great Britain.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946569
Published with the support of the department of Foreign Languages, Literatures
and Cultures of the University of Bergamo, Italy.
ISSN 1424-8689 hb. ISSN 2235-6371 eBook
ISBN 978-3-0343-3010-7 hb. ISBN 978-3-0343-3011-4 eBook
ISBN 978-3-0343-3013-8 MOBI ISBN 978-3-0343-3012-1 EPUB
This publication has been peer reviewed.
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All rights reserved.
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Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
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This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
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Acknowledgement
The editors are grateful to a scholarly group of their peers for the job
accomplished in the present volume. Appraising the work of one’s col-
leagues and helping to make it even more excellent is not an easy task,
and one never sufficiently recognized. In particular, we would like to
thank:
Guadalupe Aguado-De Cea
Ismael Arinas
Marina Bondi
Magda Bielenia-Grajewska
Emilee Moore
Laura Muresan
Carmen Pérez-Llantada
Nadezda Silaski
Girolamo Tessuto

Contents
María Ángeles Orts / Ruth Breeze
Introduction ...........................................................................................9
Power through Manipulation
Vijay K. Bhatia / Aditi Bhatia
Interdiscursive Manipulation in Media Reporting:
The Case of the Panama Papers in India .............................................29
Ana Bocanegra-Valle
Empowering the Discourse of Globalization in International
Organizations: The International Maritime Organization
as a Case in Point ................................................................................51
Shirley Carter-Thomas / Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet
Maintaining a Dominant Voice: A Syntactic Analysis of the
Way Power is Wielded in Medical Editorials ......................................71
Giuliana Elena Garzone
Persuasive Strategies on Surrogacy Websites:
A Discourse-Analytical and Rhetorical Study ..................................101
Esther Monzó-Nebot
‘Silence will Break my Bones’: The Presentation and
Representation of Victims and Perpetrators at the
Service of Just-world Views in Judicial Discourse ...........................131
8 Contents
Pascual Pérez-Paredes
A Keyword Analysis of the 2015 UK Higher Education
Green Paper and the Twitter Debate ..................................................161
Power through Persuasion
Antoinette Mary Fage-Butler
Persuading against Gender Violence: An Interdiscursive
Genre Analysis ..................................................................................195
Daniel Gallego-Hernández
Persuasion in Promotional Banking Products:
A Comparative Corpus-based Study .................................................219
Diana Giner
Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion in the Reasoning of
International Investment Arbitral Awards .........................................243
Maurizio Gotti
Power and Persuasion in Arbitration: East vs West ...........................267
Juan C. Palmer-Silveira
Showing Power and Persuasion in Business Communication:
The Corporate News Section in Websites and Social Media ............285
Carmen Sancho Guinda
Transmitting Authority in Risk Communication:
An Exploration of U.S. Air-Accident Dockets Online ......................311
Holly Vass
The Role of Hedging in Balancing Power and Persuasion in the
Judicial Context: The Case of Majority and Dissenting Opinions ......337
Notes on Contributors .......................................................................363
María Ángeles Orts / Ruth Breeze
Introduction
1. The scope of our study
The present volume of Linguistic Insights wishes to focus upon the
study of linguistic persuasion and power in the written texts of profes-
sional communication, to go further into the understanding of how they
are “constructed, interpreted, used and exploited in the achievement of
specific goals” (Sancho Guinda et al. 2014: 18). Such texts are here
contemplated from the stance of genre theory, which starts from the
premise that specialised communities have a high level of rhetorical
sophistication, the keys to which are offered solely to their members.
We, therefore, aim to bring forth studies on the language of professions –
law and arbitration, engineering, economics, advertising, business, poli-
tics, medicine, social work, education and the media − focusing upon
the analysis and scrutiny of the communicative devices that serve the
need of such professions to exert power and manipulation, and to use
persuasion. However, the perspective adopted in our work does not
envisage power simply as a distant, alienated and alienating supremacy
from above, in the exercise of what Marx called the ‘false conscious-
ness’ (McLellan 1995). As an everyday, socialized and embodied phe-
nomenon (Foucault 1972), power is, indeed, not restricted to merely
constitute the possession of authority, status and influence, “the ena-
bling mechanisms for the domination, coercion and control of subor-
dinate groups” (Simpson/Mayr 2010: 3). Specifically, much along the
lines of the seminal work by Berger/Luckmann (1967) and along the
lines of Foucault’s (1991) work, we depart here from the general prem-
ise that reality is socially constructed, and, hence, that any theory of
knowledge must account for the relationship arising between human
thought and social context; between the institutions made by humans