Analysis of Rhetorical Appeals to Logos, Ethos and Pathos in ENL and ESL Research Abstracts

Abstract

Based on Connor’s (1996) Contrastive Theory of Rhetoric, this study investigated the degree of the rhetorical appeals and their rhetorical devices in the English as a Native Language (ENL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) research abstract (RAs) from indexed journals. A mapping and selection table of rhetorical devices was introduced based on Aristotelian three elements in rhetoric to produce an effective discourse: i) three rhetorical appeals, ii) topoi, and iii) arrangement of text (Aristotle & Kennedy, 1991). The rhetorical model is also integrated with LIWC2015 psycholinguistic dimensions (Pennebaker, et al., 2015) and Compositionality Model (Bulté & Housen, 2018). The first Aristotelian element refers to three rhetorical appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos which were measured by three LIWC2015 summary variables of analytical thinking, clout and emotional tone respectively. Three rhetorical devices were identified at lexical-phrasal, sentential, and textual level for each rhetorical appeal which fulfilled the other two Aristotelian elements. In total, three summary domains with nine rhetorical devices were analysed in 480 RAs with LIWC2015 software and Readable.com online application. It was found that there are significant correlations among three rhetorical devices identified for each rhetorical appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos. Contrastive analysis revealed that ESL RAs were more rhetorically appealing to logos and pathos than ENL RAs. However, both groups of RAs did not show any significant difference in terms of their appeal to ethos. Finally, research implications and future research directions are also discussed.

The rhetorical density of authorial emotiveness and voice passiveness in abstract compositions

“…However, the non-emotive (or neutral) adjectives did not show significant changes over the same period. Thus, the same pattern may also be demonstrated by Malaysian ESL writers since there was a significant presence of the emotive lexicophrasal items to express the tone of their emotional appeal in academic research composition (Mohamad, 2022).…”

“…Nonetheless, descriptive adjectives can be rhetorically used by academic research authors to evoke the emotional appeal of academic writing. Also known as evocative adjectives, Mohamad (2022) discovered a strong correlation of this rhetorical tool with the appeal of emotional tone in the academic research composition. In a readability-based study on the use of adjectives and adverbs conducted by Wen and Lei (2022) in scientific articles, it was discovered that the trend of using emotion-related adjectives had shown an increasing trend in the scientific articles sampled from 123 scientific journals for 50 years from 1969 to 2019.…”

“…Nonetheless, the trend of using passive sentences in composing sentence-level research ideas was still commonly shown by many academic writers. As examined by Mohamad (2022), there was a significant relationship between emotional appeal and the use of passiveness in academic research composition. The same pattern was also reflected in a study by Amnuai, Kotuta, and Duangprasertchai (2020) who examined the frequencies of passive sentences in the composition of research abstracts sampled from the journals of applied linguistics.…”

“…According to Aristotle and Kennedy (1991), a persuasive academic discourse can be constructed based on three elements of rhetoric. Meanwhile, according to Myllylä (2019) and Mohamad (2022), these elements are reflected in the context of academic writing, as shown in Figure 1. The first element is the mode of persuasion, referring to Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.…”

“…As for academic writing, applying the rhetorical effect of emotional appeal could be effectively shown through choice of writing styles to evoke the writers' psychological emotions. This could be attained by presenting the written discourse with descriptive choice of words, emotionally loaded words, relatable examples, and elaborate case studies in an indirect and narrative, but academic tone of writing (Mohamad, 2022). Pennebaker et al (2015) suggested based on the proposed LIWC model of psycholinguistic domains, that a writer's emotion could be measured through the presentation of lexico-phrasal items associated with the writer's sentiment, and their negative and positive mental process.…”