The purpose of this study is to investigate how different fitness Instagram influencers use persuasive speech acts in their marketing posts. Another aim is to look at the similarities and differences between the influencers’ use of linguistic strategies and speech acts. A study was conducted on 200 Instagram posts from four different fitness influencers. A total of 638 speech acts were coded using a typology by John Searle (1979). The typology consists of the speech acts representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaratives. Two speech acts were also added by the researchers; inquires and quotations. Furthermore, the speech acts were also coded for sentence forms (declarative, imperative and interrogative) and also whether they were direct or indirect speech acts. The study also discusses the different aspects of online communication and how these might affect someone’s marketing decisions. This shows that the language someone uses online might affect his or her online identity. There was also a comparison of the results to identify similarities and differences among the selected influencers. The results show a variation of usage of Searle’s (1979) speech acts. All speech acts were used at least once but directives showed the highest frequency among all influencers since they would often command or request their followers to perform a certain action. Another result was that many of the speech acts had a certain sentence structure but a different intention or function, namely, they were indirect speech acts. The intention and function of these speech acts were often to persuade the audience and were therefore persuasive speech acts.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:06:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MiltonGR.pdf: 413442 bytes, checksum: b79036efd47b6cb0321d66bb2ce8bff8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-09-08 / In this study, we analyzed the argumentative processes of written texts produced by UERN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) vestibulandos : (students who apply for University Entrance Examinations in Brazil). It has as its corpus twenty compositions by such students. These compositions, collected in UFRN COMPERVE (Permanent Commission of vestibular examinations) and written in 2005 examination, were selected in a random way. The theoretical support is based on Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1999; 2002), Reboul (2004), Bakhtin (1992), Faraco (2003), Plat?o e Fiorim (2003) e Geraldi (1997), and other scholars. The work aimed to investigate how vestibulandos make use of argumentative techniques in order to construct their arguments in the vestibular examination. In the analysis of the corpus we considered that the used argumentative techniques, the relationship with the thesis, the sense effects students wanted to produce and the type of the required speech. It showed that in the, discourse construction of argumentative texts, students made use, with more frequency, of the following argumentative techniques: pragmatic arguments, arguments of the definition, comparison arguments, division arguments, example arguments, argument of the model and authority arguments as means to support their theses. However it was not carried out in a conventional way, reason why it leads us to believe that schools, as part of human activity, responsible for education and for the insert of learners in the literate world, have a fundamental role concerning the offer of conditions, so that, the teaching of Portuguese Language leads students to a systematic and explicit preparation of the knowledge, regarding the social and functions of the language, as well as of the strategies of the construction of argumentative texts. This can lead learners to develop communicative competence and to feel more confident when working with text production / Nesta disserta??o, analisamos os processos argumentativos do texto escrito de vestibulandos, tendo, como corpus, reda??es do Concurso Vestibular da UFRN (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte). Realizamos a an?lise em vinte reda??es, coletadas na Comiss?o Permanente de Vestibular (COMPERVE) no ano de 2005 e selecionadas de forma aleat?ria, tomando como suporte Perelman & Olbrechts- Tyteca (1999; 2002), Reboul (2004), Bakhtin (1992), Faraco (2003), Plat?o e Fiorim (2003) e Geraldi (1997), entre outros te?ricos. Objetivamos investigar como o vestibulando usa as t?cnicas argumentativas em raz?o da constru??o da argumenta??o na prova do vestibular. Na an?lise do corpus, consideramos as t?cnicas argumentativas empregadas, sua correla??o com a tese, os efeitos de sentido desejados pelos vestibulandos e o g?nero do discurso solicitado, e isso nos revelou que na constru??o discursiva do texto argumentativo os vestibulandos recorreram com mais freq??ncia as seguintes t?cnicas argumentativas: o argumento pragm?tico, o argumento da defini??o, o argumento de compara??o, o argumento da divis?o, o argumento pelo exemplo, o argumento pelo modelo e o argumento de autoridade como meios de prova da tese defendida, mas ainda de forma n?o convencional, raz?o pela qual nos leva a crer que a escola, enquanto esfera da atividade humana, respons?vel pela educa??o e inser??o do aprendiz no mundo letrado, tem um papel muito importante no que tange a criar condi??es para que o ensino de lingua portuguesa privilegie uma forma??o sistem?tica e expl?cita do conhecimento do funcionamento da l?ngua e, de igual modo, das estrat?gias de constru??o do texto argumentativo para que o aprendiz possa desenvolver a compet?ncia comunicativa e se sentir mais seguro no ato da produ??o textual