Diferentemente do que alegam visões idealizadas da ciência, as controvérsias não são fenômenos marginais na história da ciência, mas o âmbito próprio do desenvolvimento crítico do saber científico. As interações polêmicas são campo de atividade da racionalidade científica. Partindo do exame da tricotomia de tipos de polêmicas de Marcelo Dascal – constituída por discussão, disputa e controvérsia – objetiva-se caracterizar as polêmicas e traçar relações entre elas, especialmente no que tange às suas respectivas racionalidades. A proposta não se restringe a apontar consensos e dissensos entre a racionalidade dura da discussão, a irracionalidade da disputa e a racionalidade branda da controvérsia; tenciona-se o “diálogo entre racionalidades”. A interação entre as racionalidades – preservando as características de cada racionalidade, pois não se projeta reduzir uma racionalidade à outra –, possibilita o alargamento do escopo de atuação das racionalidades. A tricotomia de tipos de Marcelo Dascal escapa a tendência de dicotomização do par discussão/disputa, o qual foi tradicionalmente tido por exaustivo. Sob tal perspectiva, a controvérsia se apresenta como uma via alternativa. A racionalidade branda conduz a persuasão racional – objetivo da controvérsia. A controvérsia permite, ainda, a emergência de idéias inovadoras, o que faz dessa polêmica motor da ciência. Marcello Pera opera uma volta a Aristóteles para resgatar a função cognitiva que retórica e dialética desempenham na argumentação persuasiva da ciência. Para Pera, o foco na argumentação persuasiva da ciência revela aspectos da prática científica que foram esquecidos pelas propostas tradicionais (metodologistas) e que não receberam tratamento adequado de propostas contemporâneas (anti-metodologistas). Segundo M. Pera, o desafino das opiniões sobre a descrição e a explicação dos fatos alegadamente recorrentes do desalinho entre os fatos do mundo e as descrições do mundo gera as polêmicas na ciência. A racionalidade persuasiva empregada nas interações polêmicas visa ao convencimento não apenas dos contendores, mas também da comunidade concernente ao debate. A prática de uma argumentação persuasiva da ciência é o ponto-chave para a confluência das idéias de Marcelo Dascal e Marcello Pera. Em decorrência desses novos entendimentos acerca da ciência, emerge uma nova visão da racionalidade científica: mais flexível, sensível aos papéis da audiência e do contexto e valorada no seu empenho cognitivo. Essa racionalidade, abordada desde um ponto de vista humano, permite a emersão de conclusões razoáveis ou convincentes. / Unlike idealized views of science claim, controversies are not marginal phenomena in the history of science but the proper domain of scientific knowledge’s critical development. Polemical exchange are the field of activity of scientific rationality. Based on the exam of the Marcelo Dascal’s trichotomy of polemical exchange types – consisting of discussion, dispute and controversy – the objective is to characterize the controversy and to trace the relations between them, especially in regard to their respective rationalities. The proposal is not restricted to pointing out consensus and disagreements among the hard rationality of the discussion, the irrationality of the dispute and the soft rationality of controversy. The "dialogue between rationalities” is aimed. The interaction between rationalities – preserving the characteristics of each rationality, since it is not projected to reduce one rationality into the other – makes it possible to extend the scope of work of rationalities. The trichotomy of types of M. Dascal escapes from the tendency to dichotomization of the pair discussion/dispute, which is traditionally regarded as exhaustive. Controversy is presented as an alternative way between hard rationality and irrationality. The soft rationality leads rational persuasion – the proper aim of controversy. Controversy also allows the emergence of innovative ideas, which makes this polemic the engine of science. Marcello Pera turns back to Aristotle to rescue the cognitive function that rhetoric and dialectic play in the persuasive argumentation of science. For Pera, the focus on the persuasive argumentation of science reveals aspects of scientific practice that have been overlooked by traditional proposals (methodologists) and that have not received proper treatment from contemporary proposals (anti-methodologists). According to M. Pera, polemics in science are generated by the missmatch between descriptions fail to capture the facts. The persuasive rationality employed in polemical interactions aims convincing not only the contenders, but also the community concerning the debate. The practice of a persuasive argumentation in science is the key point for the confluence of the ideas from Marcelo Dascal and Marcello Pera. Due to these new understandings about science, a new and more flexible vision of scientific rationality emerge: one, which is sensitive to the role of audience and context in cognitive appraisals. As approached from a human point of view, this new rationality allows the emergence of convincing or reasonable conclusions.

Este trabalho visa estudar a mudança sígnica que se opera nas marcas para uma nova produção de sentido. Tal mudança é observada no decorrer do histórico dos anúncios publicitários de mídia impressa que contemplem uma mudança no modo de divulgar a marca e seus atributos para o público. Como é feita a transição de um conceito para o outro, quais são os signos simbólicos que estão por trás da mensagem. Qual o novo apelo gerado na ressignificação marcária? Essas questões aliada a teoria semiótica (peirceana e greimasiana) nos permitirão alcançar o objetivo desse trabalho que é de entender a ressignificação das marcas e a geração de uma nova produção de sentido para persuadir o público-alvo. / This work aims to study the semiotic change which takes place in the tags for a new production of meaning. Such a change is observed throughout the history of print media advertisements that include a change in the way of disseminating the brand and its attributes to the public. How is the transition from one concept to another, which are symbolic signs behind the message. What the new call generated in reframing mark? These issues combined with semiotics (Greimas and Peirce) allow us to achieve the objective of this work is to understand the reinterpretation of the brands and the creation of a new production order to persuade the target audience.

A investigação O Discurso de Celestina tem a finalidade de estabelecer dialogicamente as relações entre representações sociais, ideologia e elementos linguísticos que unem a protagonista Celestina à enunciação. Essas relações se concretizam no seio das esferas literária e histórico-social. Com esse propósito foi feito um recorte na perspectiva discursiva, espaço em que se efetiva uma série de relações de poder por intermédio das ações de Celestina. O discurso deste personagem, persuasivo por excelência, emerge da crise dos valores renascentistas, na obra La Celestina, editada pela primeira vez em 1499 e escrita por Fernando de Rojas, judeu converso, em Salamanca, Espanha. O discurso desta protagonista parece revelar a voz do autor que ora desvenda, ora encobre suas intenções, seus interesses e contextos. Seu conteúdo é redefinido e ou esvaziado, o que valoriza seu caráter paradoxal e irônico, como reflexo da cultura humanística de Rojas. Recorremos à Análise do Discurso para abordar os elementos da Nova Retórica que dessem conta do éthos discursivo de Celestina e, no seio dessa análise, nos deparamos com elementos dos mais diversos campos de estudo; destacamos, dentre eles, a parte da que analisa a reformulação textual da segunda carta de Sêneca a Lucílio sobre a diversidade da leitura e a parte que identifica os elementos do esperpento de Valle Inclán. Para concluir, reconhecemos que a persuasão é a principal característica do discurso de Celestina para alcançar seus objetivos pessoais e que ela é um personagem que se constrói e se destrói em seu discurso e por intermédio dele. / The research The Celestina speech aims to establish a dialogue relations between social representation, ideology and linguistic elements that unite the enunciation to the protagonist Celestina. These relationships are materialized within the ball literary, social historical. For this purpose a cut was made in view discursive space in which an effective series of power relations though the Celestinas actions. The speech of this character, persuasive par excellence, emerging from the transition period to the Renaissance. The book La Celestina was written around 1498 in Salamanca, Spain, by Fernando de Rojas, a Jewish convert. This speech is the real protagonist, as it reveals the authors voice, that sometimes unravels and conceals his intentions, interest and backgrounds. Its contest is reset or empty and that values its ironic and paradoxical character, reflecting that episodic memory. We appeal to the discourse analysis to address the elements of the New Rhetoric devised to address the discursive ethos of Celestina and within this analysis, we encounter elements of many fields of study, we have emphasized, among them the part of the research that identifies elements of Valle Inclán Esperpento and textual study of the reformulation of the second Senecas letter to Lucilius about the diversity of reading. To conclude, we recognize that persuasion is the hallmark of Celestinas speech to achieve her personal goals and she is a character who builds and destroys in her speech and through it.

Today, web, Internet, mobile and other ambient technologies engage in persuasive interaction with people. The technology designed to reinforce and change user’s attitude or behaviors or both through persuasion and social influence are persuasive technologies. Recently, persuasive systems and services are becoming increasingly abundant and ubiquitous. Evaluation of these systems is a challenging endeavor and typically requires a simple and efficient method. Nielsen suggests heuristic evaluation as a method for intuitive, inexpensive and easy evaluation of a user interface design. The purpose of this thesis is to examine heuristic evaluation as a method to evaluate the persuasive potential of software programs. The Heuristics used were operationalized version of Fogg’s persuasive design principles. Software programs MS Word, MS PowerPoint, Counter-Strike, The Sims, Stone and Plan Eat Smile were chosen with the goal of measuring their ability to change behavior or attitude of users. The Evaluation was performed on the software programs using three evaluators and the test results indicated that they possess significant persuasive potential. It was concluded that the set of heuristics which were developed can be used to perform summative heuristic evaluation and the method used was helpful in evaluating the persuasive potential of software programs.

The thesis explores the trend in recent years by HCI designers to create an interface which is increasingly more anthropomorphic in nature, due to advances in computer graphics and interface technologies. The thesis has researched the effects of one such manifestation of this anthropomorphic trend on the human user, which embodies the human persona, in the form of embodied agents. The thesis is anchored in the growing area of human-agent interaction studies; and how the agent's appearance in terms of their visual cues (i.e. gender, ethnicity, realism, and attractiveness levels), affects the human user interacting with these artificial entities. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the agents' visual appearance can elicit change in the user's perception and behaviour, in order to improve human-agent design, and the interaction experience for the user. The thesis extends HCI studies investigating the effect of embodied agents, by highlighting the effect of the attractiveness stereotype which can elicit various impressions, stereotypes and behavioural changes within the human user. The thesis results demonstrate that attractive agents were perceived and evaluated more positively, as well being more persuasive than the unattractive agents. Hence, the agents' attractiveness was the main visual cue which played a major role in affecting the participants' opinion and behaviour towards the agents. The thesis advances the current understanding of CASA, by providing evidence to suggest that although users may respond socially to agents; this human-agent experience is not always equal to human-human experience. The thesis concludes by stating that the CASA methodology and Media Equation require some modification and needs to be adapted when applied to human-agent interaction, and especially within the interaction-based context.

This research systematically investigates the sleeper effect, a counterintuitive phenomenon in which attitudes toward a persuasive message increase in favourableness over time despite the presence of discounting information. The sleeper effect has rarely been researched since criticisms in the 1970s and 1980s concerning relevance and difficulty in demonstrating the effect. Shifts in the consumer environment, however, merit a re-examination of the effect. The paucity of research leaves major gaps in establishing the conditions for existence of the sleeper effect, understanding the underlying mechanisms of the effect, the context in which the sleeper effect may flourish, and other factors with the potential to influence the effect. Recent research suggests self-associations at encoding impacts information processing and attitude change. The research reported in this thesis builds on the latter to develop hypotheses to test the relationships between self-associations and attitudes toward positive and negative information over time. The study adopts a quantitative approach to test the hypotheses using a series of three experiments, each building on one another. The first experiment seeks to find the absolute sleeper effect, and accomplishes this aim. The second experiment investigates the role of implicit self-anchoring on attitudes toward positive and negative information over time, showing that self-anchoring influences self/product identity overlap rather than the transfer of meaning through elaborative associations. The third experiment compares implicit self-anchoring and explicit self-referencing on attitudes toward positive and negative information, and shows that explicit self-referencing produces the associations and dissociations necessary to find the sleeper effect. This study significantly contributes to understanding the sleeper effect, not only by providing evidence for its existence, but by clarifying the mechanisms at work in the sleeper effect process. It distinguishes implicit self-anchoring and explicit self-referencing, and defines two processes in which the self and object interact in memory to influence attitudes. From a practical perspective, it situates the research in the contemporary consumer context, in which positive and negative information regarding products and services is accessible to consumers online. This study demonstrates that negative information can be leveraged to produce positive attitudes.

No description available.

The purpose of this research is to investigate actual communication and real world interactions among friends, in order to add to our understanding of political persuasion. Opinions and attitudes are affected by more than deliberate persuasive attempts, and politics are more than just elections and candidate speeches. What people say or do on an everyday basis with friends can be just as - if not more - influential, particularly as a meaning-making endeavor to establish, test, or solidify attitudes. An alternative approach to political communication should address the ongoing interactive nature of meaningmaking and the role of relationships in political persuasion. Thus this study uses discourse analysis through the lens of Sequential Inferential Paradigm to examine a conversation among friends about a political topic, finding that the structure of the conversation and the relationship between the participants are important considerations of influence.

This study examines the first inauguration speech and the four Independence anniversary speeches delivered by the former second president of Namibia, Hifikepunye Pohamba. The five volumes of these speeches, which marked Pohamba’s first term of office, plus audio-recordings of the highlights of the speeches on the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation, were the primary data of the study. Pohamba’s modern presidency, executed the laws through speeches, communicated directly to the Namibian people about what his Government have done, what it is attempting to do, and what they plan to do. In order to investigate how Hifikepunye Pohamba’s rhetoric continued in shaping democracy in the post-apartheid Namibia, the argument of the analysis was based on the Aristotelian (2007) ‘three regimes’ of rhetoric as well as the three rhetorical proofs. On the historical background information, a context of the rhetorical situation was drawn from Bitzer (1968), and the rhetorical argument and application of Perelman (1984). Moreover, close contextual analysis was also employed as it seeks to analyse the relationship between the inner working of public discourse and its historical context in order to discover what makes a particular text function persuasively. Pohamba’s speeches were analysed closely and rhetorically interpreted within their Namibian historical and political context. Thus, the study reveals the monumental occasions in the history of Namibian politics, among others, the symbolic rhetoric of the peaceful transfer of power from the founding President Sam Nujoma to the second president, who was also democratically elected, Hifikepunye Pohamba. Pohamba’s rhetoric reflects his rhetorical performative. He demonstrated his democratic ethics to his audience in his rhetoric, and constantly referred to certain individuals who were respected by his audience. Thus, he continued shaping democracy in Namibia. Pohamba’s rhetoric contains values of praising and blaming; he established fact and judgement about the past, and also advised about the future. He emphasised on the policy of national reconciliation and confirmed that reconciliation had ushered in a new dispensation of political stability, peace, unity, ethnic cohesion and security in Namibia. Namibian people must therefore continue to shun the vices of tribalism, sexism and corruption, among other things. Pohamba effectively used his rhetoric to communicate to the audience which is an important aspect of a democratic regime. This was observed internationally, which enabled Pohamba to put Namibia on the world map as he won MO Ibrahim award for African leadership at the end of his second term. However, the current study has focused only on the rhetoric of his first term.

This study investigates the relationship between social learning and perceived realism in the context of an entertainment media text, the 2015 movie San Andreas. As a fictional natural disaster movie, this film depicts several safety and survival techniques that could potentially be observed and adopted by audience members should they face a similar situation (i.e. major earthquake). While the majority of these techniques align with professionally recommended behaviors, a few are misleading. This study investigates the perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions different groups of audience members hold concerning the behaviors they observed in the film. Participants were grouped by geologically-based knowledge levels and levels of perceived realism. While the findings of this study reveal minimal differences based on knowledge and perceived realism, results clearly show that the film triggered high levels of curiosity and thinking about earthquakes and earthquake safety across the board. Furthermore, all audience members appeared to be persuaded on both a conscious and even more so on a subconscious level to behave as the characters in the film did, assuming the consequences of those actions were positive. These findings suggest that entertainment media texts can be a powerful educational and persuasive tool.