Rhetoric and persuasion in tourism communication

Rhetoric is the art or discipline that deals with the use of discourse, either spoken or written, to inform or persuade or motivate an audience, whether that audience is made up of one person or a group of persons. This course illustrates the three vital components of classical rhetoric - argument, arrangement, and style - demonstrating their effective application in the specific domain of tourism communication. Students will learn how to structure advertising and presentations of potentially touristic targets (e.g. holiday-villages, cruises, museums and other cultural events) both in the perspectives of persuading a tourist to chose a certain destination, or to motivate him to attend certain events when he is already at the destination. The course will consider the production of persuasive communication delivered though face-to-face interaction, leaflets and online texts. Within these perspectives, students will be guided to reflect on aspects including:

- The nature of persuasive communication in deliberative (hortative, advisory and advert-oriented) and epideictic (demonstrative and declamatory) contexts;
- Logic and other sources of persuasion;
- The discovery of arguments and argument schemes;
- The appeal to audience´s emotions;
- The ethical appeal;
- The use of evidence or opinions in arguments;
- The figure of speech;
- The modalities of a critical discussion.

The course will combine theoretical and practical aspects. Thus, more conceptual lectures will be sided by laboratories of discourse production where students will be invited to design different formats of persuasive communication in role-play settings.