Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Linguistics, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor Department of English Language and Linguistics, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran.

3 Department of Sociology, Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran.

10.22059/jolr.2024.385054.666902

Abstract

The function of persuasion as a linguistic action is to change the audience's attitude and behavior or strengthen his beliefs. In general, persuasion is the basic and ultimate goal of all types of communication behaviors. This kind of persuasion is applied in the form of language tricks and the phenomenon of persuasion has an active presence in speech. The study of linguistic methods and tools involved in persuasion leads to the examination of the issue of power and how to dominate the mind, and this itself is the beginning of critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis relies on methodological theories. The theory of Lac-La and Mouffe has presented a systematic formulation in this field. Discourse is the result of the communication and interaction of the speakers in a social and cultural context. Legal discourse, due to the inherent nature of communication with the audience through "language", contains various methods of persuasion, which discourse analysis can discover many of them. The Dispute Resolution Council, as a legal-judicial institution, has created a special legal discourse by using various functions of language as the main tool. The main goal of the current research is to analyze the legal discourse of this council and examine the role of linguistic knowledge in its persuasion methods. In this research, the data has been collected by field method and direct observation, from 20 sessions of conciliation branches of the Dispute Resolution Council of Islamabad Gharb city. The data includes a total of 1,273 parts of speech, which formed the linguistic body of the research and were analyzed in a descriptive-analytical way, based on the theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The research question is, what are the findings of linguistics based on the theory of Laclau and Mouffe that can be effective in the process of persuading the parties to the dispute in the discourse of the members of the dispute resolution council? The result of the research shows that in order to convince the parties to the dispute, the linguistic tools of highlighting, the relationship between the signifier and the signified, marginaliz(downplay) and hegemony, in descending order, have played an effective role in the discourse of the dispute resolution council members. In this discourse, the members of the council have used several effective words as persuasive elements by fixing the semantic system, each of which has specific meanings with specific signifiers.

Keywords

Main Subjects