Conversational Relevance in Market Setting
Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING
Introduction
Pragmatics is the study of meaning recognition expressed either in oral or in written forms, which deals with the use of social context and the ways people produce and comprehend meanings through language (Mey, 2011). Language as a tool to express or convey meaning is widely used in communication. Conversely, communication, as it uses language, functions for many different purposes and one of which is persuasion. Persuasion is an act of convincing or persuading other people to accept one’s own beliefs or opinions. According to Bettinghaus (1994), persuasion through transmitting messages attempts to change the attitude, beliefs or behavior of an individual or group of individuals. Persuasion as it tries to convince and to alter the attitude of a person or group of persons is commonly practiced in a social context called market (Wanke & Reutner, 2009).
Market persuasion involves a persuasion situation in which an agent (speaker) attempts to persuade another agent (listener) to take an action (Glazer & Rubinstein, 2006). Putting this concept in market setting, the speaker or persuader might be the seller as he sells his product and tries to persuade his buyers to buy and to patronize his products or he might be the buyer as he tries to convince the seller to sell his product in much lower price than its actual or usual price, as that of the case of bargaining. A persuader (seller or buyer) delivers his proposition (persuasive statement) either overtly manifested (explicit) or covertly manifested (implicit) in many different forms as that of statement, request or command, or in a form of a question. Such proposition expressed overtly or covertly must create a relevance to the expected information of the persuadee in order to achieve an efficient persuasive communication between the two participants. This is supported by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson as they put it “communication information comes with
THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING
Introduction
Pragmatics is the study of meaning recognition expressed either in oral or in written forms, which deals with the use of social context and the ways people produce and comprehend meanings through language (Mey, 2011). Language as a tool to express or convey meaning is widely used in communication. Conversely, communication, as it uses language, functions for many different purposes and one of which is persuasion. Persuasion is an act of convincing or persuading other people to accept one’s own beliefs or opinions. According to Bettinghaus (1994), persuasion through transmitting messages attempts to change the attitude, beliefs or behavior of an individual or group of individuals. Persuasion as it tries to convince and to alter the attitude of a person or group of persons is commonly practiced in a social context called market (Wanke & Reutner, 2009).
Market persuasion involves a persuasion situation in which an agent (speaker) attempts to persuade another agent (listener) to take an action (Glazer & Rubinstein, 2006). Putting this concept in market setting, the speaker or persuader might be the seller as he sells his product and tries to persuade his buyers to buy and to patronize his products or he might be the buyer as he tries to convince the seller to sell his product in much lower price than its actual or usual price, as that of the case of bargaining. A persuader (seller or buyer) delivers his proposition (persuasive statement) either overtly manifested (explicit) or covertly manifested (implicit) in many different forms as that of statement, request or command, or in a form of a question. Such proposition expressed overtly or covertly must create a relevance to the expected information of the persuadee in order to achieve an efficient persuasive communication between the two participants. This is supported by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson as they put it “communication information comes with
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