Traditionally, the role of language in persuasion has been mostly studied in experimental settings with a focus on how persuasive messages are understood, processed, and ultimately complied with. Recently, a new approach has emerged that focuses on the sequential properties of language-in-use mobilised in real-life persuasion-in-interaction (Humă, 2023). This body of research illuminates how aspects of sequence organisation (Humă et al., 2019, 2020), turn design (Llewellyn, 2015), and lexical choice (Sikveland & Stokoe, 2016, 2020) are implicated in persuasion. The present study contributes to this line of work by zooming in on two configurations for formatting requests in sales interactions: when-formulated and if-formulated sales requests. Using conversation analysis to examine a corpus of 159 real-life telephone calls between salespeople and prospective customers, I show that the former configuration is more effective in eliciting productive responses that advance the commercial activity. These findings can be explained in terms of the differential opportunities afforded by the two configurations to reject the sales requests. Thus, this study strengthens the claim that, in real-life social interaction, persuasion is mainly realised through the architecture of possibilities for responsive action and not through the effects of language-in-use on individual minds.

The use of the English language in many countries around the world greatly facilitates international communication. However, linguists have long pointed out that differences between established and emerging dialects of English may lead to miscommunication, especially because many users of the language may not be aware of many of these differences. Such issues may be particularly acute in high-stakes communicative endeavours such as persuading others to change their opinion or engage in a certain action. Psychologists have previously explored this construct mainly in experimental settings, whereas the present chapter uses a large database (‘corpus’) of natural language. The chapter thus provides an empirical, corpus-based analysis of the linguistic expression of persuasion across 21 international dialects (‘varieties’) of English from countries where English is widely used as a first or second language. Results indicate that there are substantial differences in the degree of overt expression of persuasion, with South Asian varieties of English indicating the lowest levels and (West) African varieties that greatest level of overt persuasion. The chapter concludes by discussing possible explanations of these patterns, implications for international communication as well as avenues for more detailed analyses of particular linguistic features involved in persuasion.

In this paper, we investigate whether appeals to expertise make robots persuasive and provide evidence on the influence of single persuasive messages in human-robot interactions. We explore the effects of two different kinds of persuasive strategies on people’s behavior and subjective evaluation of the robot: appeals to participants’ own expertise on the one hand and reference to research on the other. We present a controlled lab study in a healthcare scenario with professional elderly care workers as our participants, where the aim is to address dehydration. We study attitudinal and behavioral effects of these strategies of influence; specifically, we measure participants’ water intake after the interaction, as well as their subjective ratings of the robot. Our results show that both strategies have influence on participants’ water intake while the reference to one’s own expertise yields significant behavioral effects.

The chapter explores viewpoint across various topics and genres of political discourse. Viewpoint is defined as a pervasive property of language and conceptualisation which is exhibited across a broad range of linguistic and conceptual phenomena. The chapter starts by looking at deixis and deictic shifts in media discourses of immigration and political protests. The ideological role of viewpoints evoked by transitive versus reciprocal verbs is also considered in the context of media coverage of political protests. Subjective versus objective construal is further analysed as a viewpoint phenomenon and the role of objective construals in official communication around Covid-19 is highlighted. Viewpoint as an inherent feature in the mental spaces networks configured in response to modal and conditional constructions are considered in the context of Brexit discourse. Finally, conducted within the framework of discourse space theory, an analysis is given of distance and proximity (relative to a deictically specified viewpoint) in the discourse of the far-right organisation Britain First.

The concluding chapter offers a brief summary of the main arguments made in the course of the book.

The chapter is concerned with metaphor and focusses specifically on war metaphors in political discourses. The cognitive mechanisms at work in metaphor are described with an emphasis on frames as the unit of conceptual organisation that gets mapped in political metaphors. Recent experimental studies demonstrating the framing effects of metaphor are discussed. The war frame is described to include discussion of intertextuality as a means of accessing it. Three case studies are then presented exploring war metaphors in discourses of Covid-19, Brexit and immigration. Analogies with the first and second world wars in particular are highlighted and critiqued. The chapter defines and discusses extreme metaphors illustrated through examples in which immigrants are compared to animals and closes with a discussion of how readers may resist extreme metaphors.

The chapter explores co-speech gestures in spoken political discourse. It defines co-speech gesture as a fundamental feature of communication which is implicated in the discursive performance of prejudice. Gesture-speech relations are discussed and a classification of gestures is provided. It is shown how speech and gesture may interact with respect to schematisation, viewpoint, attention and metaphor. Two case studies focussed on the gestural style of right-wing populism are presented. The first considers the co-speech gestures executed by Donald Trump during a campaign rally. The analysis highlights his comedic use of gestures, the use of iconic and enactment gestures in connection with his border wall policy, and his use of points and shrugs to engage with his audience in different ways. The second focusses on co-speech gestures in the anti-immigration discourse of Nigel Farage. The analysis shows that legitimating moves characteristic of immigration discourse, including focussing, denial, authorisation, deixis, proximisation, metaphor, quantification and aspectising, when performed in spoken discourse are multimodal and involve a gestural component.

The chapter outlines key principles in Cognitive CDA, which inherits its social theory from CDA and from cognitive linguistics inherits a particular view of language and a framework for analysing language (as well as other semiotic modes). In connection with CDA, the chapter describes the dialectical relationship conceived between discourse and society. Key concepts relating to the dialogicality of discourse are also introduced, namely intertextuality and interdiscursivity. The central role of discourse in maintaining power and inequality is described with a focus on the ideological and legitimating functions of language and conceptualisation. In connection with cognitive linguistics, the chapter describes the non-autonomous nature of language, the continuity between grammar and the lexicon and the experiential grounding of language. The key concept of construal and its implications for ideology in language and conceptualisation are discussed. A framework in which construal operations are related to discursive strategies and domain-general cognitive systems and processes is set out. The chapter closes by briefly introducing the main models and methods of Cognitive CDA.

The chapter addresses attentional distribution in conceptualisations of events. It argues that language directs attention over particular portions of an event-structure selecting certain elements for focal attention while conceptually backgrounding other elements. The ideological implications of attentional distribution are discussed with reference to mystification whereby either human agency in or the human impact of harmful social actions is obscured. Two case studies are presented. The first considers action-chain profiling in media coverage of fatalities on the Gaza border. It shows how attentional distributions evoked by intransitive, passive and agentless passive constructions as well as nominalisations conceptually background those responsible for the fatalities. It further shows the conceptual means by which the impact of violent actions may be mitigated. The second considers path-profiling in immigration discourse. It shows how different verb choices serve to highlight humanitarian motivations for migration versus the impact of migration on host countries and considers the role of metonymy in legitimating hostile immigration policies.

The chapter examines co-text images in multimodal texts. It highlights the increasing importance of images in political discourse. The intersemiotic relations which language and image may enter into are described with an emphasis placed on intersemiotic convergence. Two areas of multimodal research in Cognitive CDA are identified: multimodal constructions and multimodal metaphor. In connection with multimodal constructions, the chapter considers news photographs and shows how news photographs and their captions may coincide with respect to the conceptual dimensions of schematisation, viewpoint and attentional distribution. In connection with multimodal metaphor, the chapter shows how metaphors expressed verbally may also be expressed visually or cross-modally in verbal and visual components of the text. The role of intertextuality and interdiscursivity in accessing source-frames is highlighted. Two case studies are presented. The first considers visual and cross-modal examples of war and animal metaphors in immigration discourse. The second considers body-poses as a particular source of metaphoricity in images.

The chapter focusses on schematisation – the image-schematic structuring of events in conceptualisation. Image schemas are defined as representations of recurrent patterns of experience which are called up in discourse to constitute our basic understanding of the situation or event described. The different domains of experience in which image schemas arise are considered alongside their ideological role in the discursive construction of events. Two case studies are presented. The first examines the motion event in media discourses of immigration. It highlights a number of conceptual parameters along which conceptualisations of immigration may depart from a basic model of motion, including in manner of motion and configuration of the ground, quantification and plexity in the figure, and the rate and iteration of the motion encoded, and considers the implications of these departures for ideology and the legitimation of hostile immigration policies. The second focusses on schematisation in media coverage of a Black Lives Matter protest. In a comparative analysis of two texts it shows the patterns of conceptualisation implicated in realising the protest paradigm in media reporting.

The chapter provides an introduction to the relationship between politics and semiotics, to Cognitive CDA as a framework for studying politics and semiotics, and to shifts in political performance and media landscapes which demand a multimodal approach to political discourse analysis. It starts by highlighting the symbolic nature of politics and the discursive means by which politics is primarily performed. The historical development of Cognitive CDA is described. The practical aims, theoretical commitments and methodological practices of Cognitive CDA are also discussed. The central position of the media in communicating politics is considered alongside the relationship between political and media institutions. Changes brought about by the advent of the internet and digital social media are discussed with a focus on the new genres of political discourse that have emerged as a result and on the more participatory forms of politics that are potentially afforded. The chapter discusses the rise of right-wing populism that has coincided with changes to the media landscape and the shifts in communicative style by which it is marked.