How Environmental Activists Persuade: A Multimodal Speech Act Approach
Given the rising prominence of youth climate activists in global discourse and the lack of research on how they persuade multimodally, this study examines the integration of speech acts and gestures in their rhetoric. By bridging speech act theory and gesture analysis, the research explores an underexplored aspect of persuasive communication in environmental activism. Analyzing 1230 speech acts from prominent activists Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin, and Xiye Bastida, the research applies Aristotle’s rhetorical triad (ethos, pathos, logos) and Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts to elucidate the strategic alignment of multimodal components with persuasive intent. Among the speech acts, 172 multimodal units (gesture – verbal couplings) were identified and classified into detailed multimodal categories, highlighting dominant uses of pragmatic and discourse-structuring gestures alongside varied facial expressions and postures. These couplings were categorized by function as follows: structuring discourse (n=51) emerged as the most frequent, followed by pragmatic functions (n=44), formulating thoughts (n=27), object-representing gestures (n=29), and action-representing gestures (n=21). Results indicate a predominance of emotional (pathos) and ethical (ethos) appeals reinforced through pragmatic gestures and expressive mimicry, with representational gestures less frequent but strategically significant. This multimodal integration confirms that persuasive efficacy in activist discourse is significantly enhanced by embodied, contextually sensitive communication practices. The findings underline the necessity of expanded analytical models in multimodal pragmatics, supporting future research directions integrating quantitative gesture analysis and advanced coding methodologies.
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Murugova, E., Khodyka, A. (2025). How Environmental Activists Persuade: A Multimodal Speech Act Approach, Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 11 (4), 85–118.
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