LEXICAL MARKERS OF EMOTIVE PERSUASION TACTICS IN ENGLISH BUSINESS TED TALKS: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article presents a linguistic analysis of lexical markers of emotive influence tactics in the English-language business-oriented TED Talks genre. This study is of relevance for two principal reasons. Firstly, it addresses a significant gap in the existing literature by examining the increasing role of the emotive component in contemporary business communication. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it addresses a crucial yet insufficiently explored area of study by offering a new and innovative approach to the systematic description of linguistic means of emotive influence from the perspective of corpus linguistics. The objective of the study is to identify, categorise and quantitatively and qualitatively analyse the lexical means of objectifying emotive influence in business speeches. The research material comprised an author’s corpus formed from 35 transcripts of TED Talks speeches from the Business section, totalling 51,894 words. The methodological basis of the work is a comprehensive approach that combines methods of corpus linguistics (frequency, contextual and concordance analysis), as well as elements of pragmatics and functional-stylistic analysis. The linguistic material was processed using the AntConc corpus manager. The identification of five main groups of lexical markers of emotive influence was based on the corpus sample. These groups include nouns denoting emotions and feelings, verbs of emotional state and experience, emotionally evaluative adjectives, intensifiers, and axiologically marked vocabulary. Quantitative analysis demonstrated a predominance of units characterised by positive emotional and evaluative semantics, thereby contributing to the establishment of a positive emotional background, the formation of trust, and audience engagement. Concurrently, the deployment of lexical elements bearing negative or ambivalent connotations serves as a contrast tactic, thereby enhancing the persuasive efficacy of orations by appealing to the personal experiences of listeners. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the systematic description of a corpus of lexical markers that influence emotion in the TED Talks genre, as a component of the speech strategy of influence in business discourse. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using the results obtained in courses on discourse studies, pragmatics, business communication and analysis of public speeches