A Sociopragmatic Analysis of Inducement in British and American TEDx Talks

Abstract

Social influence is a common aspect of daily life, as we often try to influence others or find ourselves influenced by them. Recently, there has been growing interest in this topic reflected in more popular researches exploring a wide array of loosely connected subjects. These subjects are of diffuse relationships extending on a continuum from hard to soft, with inducement typically considered to fall on the softer end of this continuum. To the best of the researchers' knowledge, it has not been studied from a sociopragmatic perspective especially in public speech like TEDx Talks. To address this gap, this study mainly aims at (1) investigating the way the social variable of occupation influences the use of inducement strategies in British and American TEDx talks. (2) examining the way politeness strategies differ in enhancing inducement across British and American TEDx talks. For data analysis, a sample of four (two from each) British and American TEDx talks is chosen from four different TEDx speakers. The target sample is analyzed through an eclectic model designed by the present study. The study comprised both qualitative and quantitative analyses, which helped present the conclusion that occupation is an inevitable sociolinguistic variable that significantly influences inducement strategies used by speakers in British and American TEDx talks.