MACMILLAN Persuasion in Specialised Discourses (Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse)

This book examines the concept of persuasion in written texts for specialist audiences in the English and Czech languages. By exploring a corpus of academic research articles, corporate reports, religious sermons and user manuals the authors aim to reveal similarities and differences in rhetorical strategies across cultures and genres. They draw on Biber and Conrad’s (2009) model for contextualising interaction in specialised discourses, Bell’s (1997) framework for the analysis of participants roles, Swales’ (1990)  genre analysis approach for considering genre constraints and Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model for investigating writer-reader interaction. The result is a book which will appeal to researchers and students in Discourse Studies, especially those with an interest in genre and rhetorical strategies. Review “This book takes the exploration of persuasion in specialised discourses in new directions by providing a detailed cross-genre comparison and using a systematic analytical approach. The research conducted by the co-authors is rigorous, relevant and grounded and the reported outcomes are informative and illuminating.” --Carmen Peréz-Llantada, University of Zaragoza, Spain “This volume provides valuable tools for the analysis of persuasive strategies and does so by looking at an aspect that is particularly relevant to the current globalized context of communication: the interplay between intercultural variation in persuasive strategies and different types of specialised discourse. The comparative study of corpora in English and Czech will offer new insights into intercultural rhetoric to researchers, students and practitioners from many different cultures.” -- Marina Bondi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy “This is a must-read for all interested in empirical studies on non-native discourse genres. Persuasion in Specialised Discourses compares persuasion in academic, technical, business and religious texts by Czech writers and English natives. It argues rightly and convincingly that culture-specific variation enriches the English language and makes it truly global.” --Josef Schmied, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany  “The innovative approach contributed by this volume combines the Aristotelian input from classical rhetoric, traditionally offered by stylistics and writing manuals and monographs, with contrastive empirical studies. Persuasion in Specialised Discourses not only describes, but also discovers and contrasts strategies and trends in two different linguocultural environments (Czech and Anglophone) and across four major discourse-specific areas: those of the academia, business, religion and technology.” –Carmen Sancho Guinda, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain From the Back Cover “This book takes the exploration of persuasion in specialised discourses in new directions by providing a detailed cross-genre comparison and using a systematic analytical approach. The research conducted by the co-authors is rigorous, relevant and grounded and the reported outcomes are informative and illuminating.” --Carmen Peréz-Llantada, University of Zaragoza, Spain “This volume provides valuable tools for the analysis of persuasive strategies and does so by looking at an aspect that is particularly relevant to the current globalized context of communication: the interplay between intercultural variation in persuasive strategies and different types of specialised discourse.” --Marina Bondi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy  This book examines the concept of persuasion in written texts for specialist audiences in the English and Czech languages. By exploring a corpus of academic research articles, corporate reports, religious sermons and user manuals the authors aim to reveal similarities and differences in rhetorical strategies across cultures and genres. They draw on Biber and Conrad’s (2009) model for contextualising interaction