Communicating Clearly
Asynchronous Session
The Representations of Women in Current Marriage Rituals: Historical Analysis of the Representations of the Feminine in the Rituals of Current Religions in Latin America
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fabio Andrés Medina Ostos
The three religions called "of the book" and the same ones that come from the common trunk of Abraham and accept an unique God, are the ones that come together in this investigation that analyzes the symbology and history of one of the most important rituals within any religion: Marriage. This investigation goes back to the founding prophets of these three religions (Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam) and explore his way of life, his relationship with women, and the teachings regarding the marriage ritual. In the subsequent phase of the investigation, we made a comparison with the current marriage ceremony in which we explore the true role of women in the wedding ritual. Is the female model of 2,000 years ago still the one who still gets married in our marriage rituals today?
Persuasive Strategies in Informational Emails: A Corpus-based Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ghaleb Rabab’ah
The current study endeavors to uncover the diverse range of strategies utilized in contemporary marketing information emails to influence their target customers and engage them effectively. It also assesses whether significant differences exist among these strategies. We used a mixed methodology involving both descriptive quantitative and qualitative data analysis on a corpus of 800 emails encompassing over a million words, spanning the years between 2020 and 2021. Drawing from Aristotle’s theory of persuasion, we tailored a compendium of 15 persuasive strategies. Our categorization of persuasive strategies within each email is guided by our predefined operational definitions and categorization criteria serving as the classification criteria. The findings unveil that the most commonly employed persuasive strategies are offer, reasoning and logic, and authority, while the least utilized ones are bandwagon, contrasting and romantic strategies. These findings serve to demonstrate the profound significance of persuasive strategies in business communication, particularly within the realm of information emails. As the findings of our study provide valuable insights into the most frequent persuasive strategies, they play a pivotal role in crafting persuasive and impactful marketing messages. Illuminating the underlying mechanisms and strategies that drive this process in marketing emails enhances our understanding of how marketers can effectively utilize persuasion strategies to forge strong connections with their target customers and influence their behavior. We recommend businesses, as well as education and training sectors, incorporate the diverse range of our proposed persuasive strategies.
Human and Subjects of Affection in the Dystopian Novels of Ishiguro Kazuo
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xinyue Sheng
Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-British laureate of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, is renowned for his nuanced exploration of the human condition through the prism of science fiction. In his distinguished novels, "Klara and the Sun" and "Never Let Me Go," Ishiguro explores the profound impacts of technology on human nature and societal structures. These narratives foster critical discussions on the role of technology in shaping our lives, drawing attention to the complex power dynamics at play among various societal actors. Ishiguro employs phenomenological feminism to critique the assumed neutrality of technology, presenting it as a force imbued with social and emotional significance. He acknowledges the benefits of technological advancements while also voicing concerns over the uncertainties and anxieties they bring about the future. Through these stories, Ishiguro illuminates the ways in which technology molds his fictional worlds, underscoring the necessity of preserving core human values amidst rapid technological change. His work serves as a poignant reminder of the resilience of the human spirit, asserting its primacy over the artificial confines of a technologically dominated world, and invites readers to reflect on maintaining humanity's essence in the face of relentless progress.
Sovereignty - Nomadic - Dislocation: The Function of Metaphors and Concepts in the Reading of Postmodern Poem
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Przemyslaw Koniuszy
Contemporary poetry, increasingly accused of hermeticism and incomprehensibility, seeks to problematize the experience of the world of liquid modernity. In this paper, I show how concepts derived from the writings of contemporary biopolitical philosophers allow us to overcome this incomprehensibility and thus deepen our understanding of both the present poetic field and individual poems. I use two Polish poetry volumes as interpretive examples: "Osobnikt" by Krzysztof Siwczyk and "Eating the Sovereign" by Kacper Bartczak. Analyzing the phenomenon of "traveling concepts" and "transfer of ideas" between literature and speculative thought, I present the convergence of the poetic projects with the key views of philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Rosi Braidotti, Ernesto Laclau, and Roberto Esposito. In both cases, the "transfer" is an openness to anything that being and thinking can push on a new track, into new regions of intellectual work, where there are hidden elements uncalculated, spontaneously capable of contributing to a vital understanding of the relationship between the poetic self and an unfavorable biopolitical/anarchist environment. In my view, Siwczyk's Osobnikt and Bartczak's Sovereign (re)arranges space, seeing the poem, which undertakes self-creation, as a reservoir of potential modeling of interpersonal and interspecies space. The purpose is to show that contemporary European poetry insists on the recovery of the individual's autonomous position. The stakes of literature relating to displacement and transgression are to create a constellation of keystones of being, in which individual points of thinking interfere with such domains as life, law and logos.
