MinSeob Lee, Kyoung Jun Lee, Uses of Rhetorical Reasoning Theories in Business Communication Researches, Business Communication Research and Practice 2(1), 2019. (Pdf)
Objectives: By literature review, this paper tries to find how rhetorical reasoning models and theories have been used in business communication both in industry and academia and answer the following questions: 1) Is rhetorical reasoning important for persua- sion in business? 2) What kinds of rhetorical reasoning methods have been used in business communication?
Methods: Dissertations and journal articles from RISS (Research Information Sharing Service) and Google Scholar were gathered. Academic sources were reviewed based on the basic frame of research: Domain, Method, and Results.
Results: Theories and models of Perelman, Toulmin, and van Eemeren have been used to explain various phenomena in the field of business. Business fields in this paper include advertising, bank annual reports, downsizing reports, and policy decision making processes.
Conclusions: Rhetorical reasoning is a widely used method in business communication. Several suggestions for future researches are: First, more rhetorical theories and models are needed to be used to business communication research. Second, existing rhetori- cal reasoning models like the argumentation model of Toulmin need to be tested in more diverse fields of business communication. Third, in addition to text, rhetorical, content analysis, other kinds of research methods such as experiments will be useful for ex- panding the boundaries of business communication research based on rhetorical reasoning theories.
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