Persuasive Communication: Case of Marekting
Persuasive communication: marketing*
MARIE-ODILE TAILLARD
The
case
of
Abstract
Two of the goals of human communication are: to be understood and to be believed. In persuasive communication, both of these acts are fulfilled. Pragmatists have investigated the first goal and how it is carried out, while social psychologists have focused on the second goal. This paper attempts to shed new light on persuasion by reviewing work from both fields and sketching the outline of a model integrating such work. Relevance theory bridges communication and cognition and, as such, provides a solid foundation for further research on persuasion. Marketing communication offers a rich domain of investigation for this endeavor: we show that pragmatics can only benefit from an analysis of persuasive communication in an “optimized” context such as marketing.
1 Introduction One of our goals, when we communicate, is to be understood. Another goal is to be believed: we try to affect our audiences’ beliefs, desires and actions. Persuasion is the communicative act that carries out both these goals – an audience that has been persuaded has understood an utterance, and believed its message1. Accounting for the understanding aspect has typically been the work of pragmatic theorists, while explaining how attitudes change has been the focus of social psychologists. A plausible study of persuasion must bring the two fields together. Both disciplines have so far fallen short of providing satisfactory models of persuasion because they have failed to
*
I would like to thank Deirdre Wilson for her continued support and invaluable guidance for my work in general and this paper in particular. I also wish to thank Jack Hawkins for encouraging me to come back to linguistics after “several” years away from the field. I am aware of the different meanings of the word “message” in the three disciplines of pragmatics, social psychology and marketing. I have endeavored to use “message” in a
MARIE-ODILE TAILLARD
The
case
of
Abstract
Two of the goals of human communication are: to be understood and to be believed. In persuasive communication, both of these acts are fulfilled. Pragmatists have investigated the first goal and how it is carried out, while social psychologists have focused on the second goal. This paper attempts to shed new light on persuasion by reviewing work from both fields and sketching the outline of a model integrating such work. Relevance theory bridges communication and cognition and, as such, provides a solid foundation for further research on persuasion. Marketing communication offers a rich domain of investigation for this endeavor: we show that pragmatics can only benefit from an analysis of persuasive communication in an “optimized” context such as marketing.
1 Introduction One of our goals, when we communicate, is to be understood. Another goal is to be believed: we try to affect our audiences’ beliefs, desires and actions. Persuasion is the communicative act that carries out both these goals – an audience that has been persuaded has understood an utterance, and believed its message1. Accounting for the understanding aspect has typically been the work of pragmatic theorists, while explaining how attitudes change has been the focus of social psychologists. A plausible study of persuasion must bring the two fields together. Both disciplines have so far fallen short of providing satisfactory models of persuasion because they have failed to
*
I would like to thank Deirdre Wilson for her continued support and invaluable guidance for my work in general and this paper in particular. I also wish to thank Jack Hawkins for encouraging me to come back to linguistics after “several” years away from the field. I am aware of the different meanings of the word “message” in the three disciplines of pragmatics, social psychology and marketing. I have endeavored to use “message” in a