A Comparison Of Persuasive Strategies In Chinese And American News Commentaries

News commentaries are important and highly visible instances ofpublic persuasion. News commentaries provide researchers a good way to learn rhetorical patterns, persuasive strategies, and cultural differences. As such, news commentaries merit scholarly attention. After reviewing the related literature, this thesis finds out that contrastive persuasive strategy research on the discourse of news commentaries is neglected to some extent. Thus, it turns out to be the motive for this thesis to investigate the differences and similarities of persuasive strategies adopted by American writers and Chinese writers in news commentary writing.Two groups of news commentaries respectively contributed by Chinese writers and American writers were collected and analyzed. The findings of the persuasive strategy's priority for Chinese are logos, pathos and ethos; while, the priority order of persuasive strategy for American is logos, ethos and pathos. Chinese writers are accustomed to take 'to move the audience with emotion' and 'to convince the audience with reason' as their most important two persuasive strategies in which reason is considered as the dominant method to persuade others. In addition to logos and argument, American writers are good at showing their knowledge (good sense), wisdom (good will) as well as morality (good moral character) so that they can enjoy the special credits and authorities to persuade their readers or audience. Showing their superiority on ethos is an essential part in western persuasion. With the findings of this thesis, more effective cross-cultural communication and more insightful understanding of different cultures, societies, as well as pedagogical implications, are to be achieved.