The social neuroscience of persuasion approach to the religious intercultural communication: A conceptual evidence from Sidhwa’s novel ‘An American Brat’

Abstract

The study aims to understand the influence of religio-cultural right-wing persuasion in intercultural communication, as exhibited in a novel representing Pakistani national culture and Parsee minority culture. The methodology involves directed qualitative content analysis of Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel “An American Brat,” using a conceptual model/framework adapting/extracting coding protocol from Morin and Renvoisé’s model to analyze communication within a social neuroscience context. The research delves into the curated message of cultural diversity. Furthermore, it explains the insight of the situation into cultural and religio-cultural persuasion by the writer, which she represented in the context of three cultures, American, Pakistani, and Parsee. The characters’ communication seemed dominant, reflecting the communication regarding Pakistani Islamic cultural values due to its impact and dominance, specifically on personal and contrastive stimuli of the characters’ intuitive knowledge. Likewise, the other persuasive elements from the conceptual model/framework of Morin and Renvoisé are also reflected in the characters’ communication, which interprets any communication in a social neuroscience context. The innovative understudy of intercultural communication shows how social neuro-persuasion succeeds in reconnecting characters to their subconscious fundamental brain-rooted cognitive, cultural, and social identity. Hence, cognitive changes in stimuli often would not change or get easily influenced at teenage on conceptual, theoretical, or biological levels. According to the researchers’ conceptual arguments, future studies may utilize the present model within the textual quotations from the novel’s original text, as the present research was only delimited to qualitative content analysis. However, the theoretical/conceptual framework of the neuroscience of persuasion needs to be verified.

Elaboration of Underpinning Methods and Data Analysis Process of Directed Qualitative Content Analysis for Communication Studies

“…Experts and researchers apply QCA inductively, deductively, or summatively (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005;Mayring, 2000;Mayring, 2014). The inductive approach to QCA aids in developing schematic models, theories/themes, conceptual/theoretical frameworks, or theories as the most commonly used data analysis approach (Vaismoradi et al, 2013(Vaismoradi et al, , 2016; it could be tested and refined by employing it with QCA (Aslam, Alsharairi, Barzani et al, 2024;Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). DQCA is employed in various domains, but its application in political communication remains relatively less explored (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008).…”