“PERSUASION BEYOND LANGUAGE: PARALINGUISTIC STRATEGIES IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION”
Keywords:
political discourse, persuasion, paralinguistics, multimodality, gestures, gaze, critical discourse analysisAbstract
Political communication increasingly relies on paralinguistic and multimodal strategies that enhance persuasive impact beyond verbal content. This paper examines how non-verbal cues—such as intonation, prosody, gesture, gaze, and facial expression—operate as persuasive resources in political discourse. Drawing upon frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 2010), discourse and power (van Dijk, 2008), and multimodal semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021), the study synthesizes prior research and recent empirical findings to demonstrate that paralinguistic means play a decisive role in shaping ideological interpretation and emotional resonance. By integrating theoretical and empirical perspectives, the paper identifies key functions of paralinguistic persuasion—emotional alignment, authority display, credibility enhancement, and affective synchronization—and discusses their implications for democratic deliberation and media perception.
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