The Use of Persuasive Speech Acts by Female Arab Fashion Influencers

Abstract

This study investigates the persuasive speech acts used by six female Arab fashion influencers on Instagram, namely, Joelle Mardinian, Ascia, Model_Roz- Ola Al Fares, Dalal AlDoub, and Maya Ahmad based on the framework of Speech Act Theory (SAT). The data were collected manually from the posts of the target influencers on Instagram and were put together in a specialized corpus containing approximately, 20,000 words. The corpus was manually annotated to include pragmatic information about the types of persuasive speech acts used by each influencer. The results reveal that the majority of speech acts identified by Searle (1979) were used by the target influencers with different frequencies except for declarative speech acts whose function is incompatible with the function of persuasion. The results also show that the most frequently used speech act was the assertive act followed by directives and expressives. However, the least used speech acts were commissives and quotations. In addition, the results demonstrate that the majority of the speech acts used by the influencers were indirect speech acts. The study concludes with marketing implications and recommendations for further research.