Persuasion in Religious Debates: A Pragma-Dialectic Study

Abstract

The present study primarily focuses on investigating the pragma-dialectical strategies of persuasion and explores the way they are used to persuade their audience and to win the debate. It analyses the debate entitled ‘Islam is a Religion of Peace’ pragmatically in an attempt to  identify a way to defend Islam and persuade others with its truth, and to fill a gap that has not received enough attention. In the context of Mahdi Hassan's (year) debate, an eclectic model is designed in order to achieve the aims of the study; it comprises three theories: van Eemeren's (2018) Critical Discussion, Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness and Grice's (1975) Theory of cooperative principle. It has been found that persuasion can be achieved by using and/or flouting different strategies and certain speech acts can be used in the four stages. Moreover, politeness strategies play an important role in the persuasion process and flouting the maxims of the cooperative principle can serves much in persuasion. Finally, Hassan seems to be more convincing