Formy perswazji

Abstract

Persuasion is a conscious communicative action the purpose of which is to influence the recipient and thereby to change her position on the subject in question or to throw her off her previous attitude or conviction. The broadest formula of persuasive activity, suggested by Jürgen Habermas’s idealist conception of communication, assumes the type of strategic communicative behaviour which implies influence exercising instead of consent. Within the consent-versus-influence model, or the model of formal pragmatics proposed by Habermas, the agreement of speech act participants is tantamount to the comprehension of a linguistically standarized utterance, and is nothing more than the knowledge of general conditions in which the listener may accept the utterance. Important here are interpersonal relations of participants in the communication process as well as intersubjective communicative community understood as the agreement on the accepted and shared norms of co-operation within the speech act, of shared propositonal knowledge and of trust in the interlocutor’s subjective sincerity. In the influence model which includes not only persuasion but also manipulation these three conditions may not be fulfilled. For example, the sender does not need to (and usually does not) articulate in a sincere way his suppositions, intentions, feelings or wishes; the listener may not share his/her knowledge, and the speaker may not need to articulate a true judgment. Finally, the listener may not accept interpersonal reference as legitimate, that is, she needs neither to know fully nor accept the superiority/inferiority norm imposed by the speaker. Within the influence-oriented communication process persuasion on the level of meaning could be defined as an interactive forcing of meaning whereas on the level of speech acts as seizing control over the reception and comprehension processes. On the level of social interaction it can be defined in turn as an anticipation of gaining advantage in terms of the sender’s social status, or gaining profit in the form of a performative act by which the offer included in the speech act is accepted. Assumed here is a certain form (...).