Persuasion in Turkish oped articles : The discourse-pragmatic functions of rhetorical questions

This study investigates rhetorical questions which are one of the linguistic tools used in op-ed articles in Turkish newspapers as instances of persuasive discourse.. The writer aims at altering the readers? thought, attitude and ideas, and persuading the readers in the way he thinks. Rhetorical questions are used as effective persuasion strategies, and this study seeks the answer to discourse-pragmatic functions of rhetorical questions. The database includes rhetorical questions from Turkish op-ed articles of three writers in a period of four months that appeared in five different newspapers. The findings of the study show that the rhetorical questions are used in seven different ways by the writers: 1) rhetorical questions functioning as argument where reasoning is explicitly sateted in the text, 2) rhetorical questions functioning as standpoint where reasoning is explicitly sateted in the text, 3) rhetorical questions stating opposite polarity, 4) rhetorical questions with the question word ?why? explicitly stated, 5) conducive rhetorical questions, 6) adjacent pairs where rhetorical questions are followed by answers, 7) triggering rhetorical questions. With respect to their discourse-pragmatic functions, the database reveals that writers opt for rhetorical questions and persuasive tools for their 1) argumentative function, 2) manipulating function, 3) shared-subjectivity function, 4) triggering function.