Science communication has gained high importance in the current knowledge and risk society. Nevertheless, there is
still a lack of qualitative studies on how non-experts and experts engage in opinionated scientific debates and which linguistic
devices they use to gain influence on other people’s attitudes toward a scientific issue.
In our study, we examine dialogical modes of science communication (i.e. weblogs) used by bloggers and audiences
to engage into opinionated discourse about scientific endeavors. As those exchanges easily lead to controversies between different
points of views, stances and attitudes, we focus from a rhetorically-driven linguistic perspective on devices to persuade the
other participants and readers and to control the discourse. Hence, we ask which linguistic instruments are used to gain influence
on influence. The aim of our study is to get deeper insights into the persuasive strategies mainly used in those forms of external
science communication.
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