The final assignment for this course is a written qualitative study in which you show that you can use the knowledge from the course to analyse and create persuasive texts.
Part 1: Write two advertisement texts for a product/organisation (Pink Ribbon and Charlotte Tilbury Cosmetics) in which you do apply three argumentative and/or rhetoric persuasive devices (1. metaphor 2. alliteration 3. arguments focused on desirability). (Max. 200 words per text).
Part 2: Also write two advertisement texts for the same product/organisation in which you do not apply the persuasive instruments. (Max. 200 words per text). So, if you use metaphor, alliteration and arguments focused on desirability in the persuasive text of organisation A, then you must use exactly these devices in the persuasive text of organisation B.
Part 3: Write two thorough analyses for the two sets of two texts in which you discuss the choice of argumentative and/or rhetoric persuasive instruments (e.g. What is the purpose? What is the target group? What is the desired effect of the means?). (Between 400-500 words per analysis).
Part 4: Think of possible quantitative follow-up research based on your qualitative set-up in Part 1-2 and your short qualitative analysis in Part 3, and write a short text about this (e.g. What could be a good research question/hypothesis? How could the two sets of texts contribute to this or is another method needed? Why is this interesting for quantitative research?). (Max. 200 words).
Part 5: Select a minimum of two additional sources about the persuasions found, the argumentative and/or rhetorical means and incorporate these in the text.
The assignment is divided into paragraphs:
1) An introduction in which you introduce the text genre and the motivation for the three chosen devices (max. 150 words);
2) Literature or the ‘background information’, in which you say something about the text genre and the three devices using literature (Max. 400 words);
3) The methodology (Max. 100 words);
4) The analysis (see Part 1-3 and word count);
5) A conclusion in which you briefly summarise your findings (Max. 200 words) and present your suggestions for a quantitative follow-up study (see Part 4-5 and word count).
