Rhetoric and emotions in social networks: a linguistic analysis of the appeal to emotions as a form of persuasion in the Cancel Culture movement

Langer, in her book entitled Philosophy in a New Key, explains that: “not higher sensitivity, no longer memory or even quicker association sets man so far above other animals that he can regard them as denizens of a lower world: no, it is the power of using symbols—the power of speech—that makes him lord of the earth”. It is thanks to this peculiarity that the human being is able to give voice, through his body, which is the window of the mind, to his ego and the realm of emotions that together define his identity. Emotions, on the other hand, are something difficult to explain but at the same time fascinating, whose power has been known and studied since ancient times. In fact, according to Aristotle, emotions, called by Leonardo da Vinci the movements of the soul, have the ability to affect people’s judgement. And it is precisely the language which is able to paint the motion of the soul and reveal the interiority of the ego. Yet, since ancient times, man has understood that the power of language and emotions can also be used to persuade: to persuade oneself and to persuade others. Thus, in time, various theories and concepts related to rhetoric have been developed that have evolved from time to time and adapted to changes both external and internal to man, as well as changes in language. In fact, language, over the course of history, has undergone and continues to undergo an incessant transformation, because if it is true that the word is useful to man to give voice to his interiority, it is also useful to describe the world around him, and the change in the external world is accompanied by a consequent adaptation of the language to ensure that it is always able to fully describe the surrounding reality. Human beings passed from a long oral tradition in which the fundamental element was memory, to the preservation of writings with the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. The invention of the printing press is one of the great changes that have been reflected in the language and which has entailed attention to the aesthetics of the text and composition. The continuous technological progress has led to the birth of social networks at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which, in fact, represent alternative realities to the physical one, with new and peculiar rules and mechanisms. Even the language has adapted to this new reality and so have the forms of persuasion. Virtual reality and material reality are, however, closely linked and have reciprocal effects, which means that changes in physical reality can have great resonance within social networks and vice versa. An example of this interrelation is provided by the movement that has arisen around 2017, called the Cancel Culture movement. This movement is so called in reference to a form of ostracism in which a person is distrusted from social or working life and this distrust can take place both in virtual reality and in the material one. This movement over the years has assumed ever greater importance linked to important social issues such as racism or other forms of intolerance. The aim of this thesis is to examine, from a linguistic point of view, two corpora previously collected and relating to the Cancel Culture movement and, in particular, one concerning the question of the transsexual community and J. K. Rowling’s positions, and another relating to the dispute over the legitimacy of Christopher Columbus. The purpose is to observe how people who took part in these discussions on social networks, have appealed to emotions as a form of persuasion, or, more simply, to what emotions, what techniques, and for what purposes these were used by participants in the discussions to be persuasive.