LINGUO-PRAGMATICS OF PERSONAL GROWTH IN CONTEMPORARY MOTIVATIONAL MEDIA
Abstract
The paper explores the stylistic and linguo-pragmatic features of TED Talks as a genre of contemporary media with specific emphasis on the motivational discourse. As the public demand for self-development and emotional intelligence rises globally, investigations into how these issues are communicated through media genres such as TED Talks are gaining timeliness. The research aims to dig up and interpret the pragmatic intentions of TED speakers’ speeches and reveal the stylistic means used to achieve these intentions persuasively and engagingly. Methodologically, the study draws on a corpus of 10 TED Talks on personal development. The analysis brings together three interrelated approaches: corpus-based discourse analysis to identify structural and thematic patterns; pragmatic analysis, with appeal to Leech’s theory of engagement strategies; and stylistic-rhetorical analysis with a view to identifying devices such as metaphor, anaphora, and rhetorical questions. The findings show that the most dominant pragmatic intentions are making an emotional impact (40%), evoking listener interest (15%), making the audience think (10%), and nudging action (10%). The realisation of these intentions is achieved primarily through lexical stylistic devices (55%), followed by syntactic (35%) and phonetic (10%) devices. Combining pragmatic goals and stylistic devices enables speakers to construct emotionally appealing, intellectually stimulating, and action-inducing messages. The study concludes that TED Talks represent a rhetorically structured genre that effectively balances cognitive and affective appeals through strategic uses of language. The results contribute to media linguistics by showing how motivational discourse functions at the intersection of personal relevance, stylistic charm, and pragmatic intention.
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