An Analysis of Persuasive Strategies in the Political Talks of Ahmed Ouyahia: A Contrastive Study of Arabic and French

Abstract

The present research is a contrastive study that aims at investigating the persuasive strategies used by the previous Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia in his political talks in both Arabic and French.  It sheds light on persuasive strategies as an important aspect of communication manifesting in plethoric contexts including advertisement, classroom, and so on. This research is conducted within Aristotle’s (1939) theory of Ethos, Pathos and Logos and analyzed a set of eight political interviews and press conferences (4 in Arabic and 4 in French) in which Ahmed Ouyahia is involved . The findings reveal some parallels and differences in the employment of persuasive strategies cross linguistically.  The Algerian Prime Minister and leader of RND exhibited the use of Logos as the most prevalent rhetorical strategy in both Arabic and French talks, followed by Pathos and Ethos with different degrees of application. The study displays that the most used appeals in Arabic and French are statistics, emotional, and play on words appeals. Additionally, the results indicate that the higher use of Pathos elements in the French data may be attributed to Ouyahia’s intellectual background, ideology or interpersonal practice. Further, the invocation of some religious forms to show more credibility and consistency were peculiar to Arabic data. Moreover, the analysis showcases that Ouyahia employed a variety of appeals tackling divergent topics to persuade, manipulate and win the audience’s approval. The conduct offers a set of pedagogical implications to the ELT teaching and learning context.