Persuasion in the Mirror Newspaper: Vuwani Demarcation Discourses

The book is about persuasion in Vuwani demarcation discourses with regards to series of articles released in the ¿Mirror¿ newspaper within a period of three years ranging from 2015, 2016, and 2017. The purpose of this study was to explore how communicators within a media text deploy linguistic elements in their verbal and non-verbal messages to persuade targets to comply with their desired goals. This is in line with Wilson (1990) and Berger (1997) who assert that message production is a result of a goal-driven process and that communication is strategic and purposive to gain compliance. The objectives of this study were to examine specific goals exhibited in messages constructed by communicators who were involved in the Vuwani demarcation discourses and to flag out linguistic strategies and tactics used by communicators to gain compliance. Literature relating to communication, compliance-gaining persuasion, message production, and language usage was reviewed.Qualitative research design was used as an approach for this study. While, qualitative media content analysis was adopted as a research methodology.