Children learn to distinguish registers for different roles: talk as child versus as adult, as girl versus boy, as parent versus child, as teacher, as doctor, marking each “voice” with intonation, vocabulary, and speech acts. They learn to mark gender and status with each role; what counts as polite, how to address different people, how to mark membership in a speech community (e.g., family, school, tennis players, chess players), and how to convey specific goals in conversation. They reply on experts for new word meanings and identify some adults as reliable sources of such information. They mark information as reliable or as second-hand, through use of evidentials. They adapt their speech to each addressee and take into account the common ground relevant to each from as young as 1;6 on. They keep track of what is given and what new, making use of articles (a versus the), and moving from definite noun phrases (new) to pronouns (given). They learn to be persuasive, and persistent, bargaining in their negotiations. They give stage directions in pretend play. And they start to use figurative language. They learn how questions work at school. And they learn how to tell stories.

For maximum effect, stories should be deployed strategically. That requires understanding the art of persuasion, the stages of a successful story, scene setting, and how to use the stories of others to illustrate important points. But by far the most powerful of all is knowing and using the stories which only you can tell.

Chapter 6 suggests that the relevance-theory notion of cognitive effect be supplemented with the new notion of affective effect. We propose two different types of affective effect: primary affective effects, which typically act as input to inferential processes, and secondary affective effects, which are typically the output of inferential processes. Primary affective effects come in two flavours: anticipatory effects and transfer effects. The first of these are those effects which prepare an individual for a course of action; the latter are communicative, and inextricably linked with the interpretation of natural codes, inherently communicative behaviours which are ‘natural’ in the sense of Grice. In the case of secondary affective effects, propositional descriptions give rise to affective effects which rest on the imaginative abilities of the hearer/reader. This happens typically with literature and poetry. Emotions, we argue, appear to be a central contributor to persuasion, and we suggest this is so because of the special relationship that exists between affective and cognitive effects within the domain of achieving relevance.

This chapter explores how writing is used and controlled by authority, and illustrates how writing can hold social relations in place as well as challenge them – how it can channel authority as well as undermine it, and how it wields the power to regulate and persuade. Writing practices and writing spaces can be restricted in a wide variety of ways from limitations of access and availability through to legal prohibition. The examples show that who writes and what they write can be both regulated and used to regulate or influence the behaviour of others. The power of writing may convey instructions that we ignore at our peril, or may simply be a gentle encouragement to act or think in a particular way. Often the softer persuasive force of writing works to shape the way in which we see the world and how we think about our place in it.

This chapter takes a fresh look at the marionette image introduced by Plato in a famous passage of Book 1 of the Laws, as he undertakes to explain the bearing of self-rule upon virtue (644b–645e). I argue that the reader of the passage is first offered a cognitive model of a unitary self, presided over by reasoning – which prompts bafflement in the Athenian Visitor’s interlocutors. The marionette image then in effect undermines that model, by portraying humans as passive subjects of contrary controlling impulses determining their behaviour. Finally the image is complicated and in the end transcended by reintroduction of reasoning as a special kind of divinely inspired impulse, with which one must actively cooperate if animal impulses are to be mastered. I examine the way Plato’s reference at this point to law (where there is a key translation problem) should be understood to bear upon the nature of the reasoning in question. In conclusion, I comment on what light is thrown by the marionette passage on self-rule, as we have been promised.

As the twenty-first century progresses, geopolitical competition and conflict has steadily increased. Although this competition and conflict is still noticeable offline, there is an increasing focus on online priming and mobilisation of global audiences. This chapter details and analyses the nature of geopolitics in the social media age with the case study involving the struggle for influence in Ukraine. Attempts are made to shape and construct the ’reality’ in Ukraine as a means of freeing-up one’s own operational choices while limiting those of the opponent.

Writing the paper is one of the most challenging aspects of a project, and learning to write the report well is one of the most important skills to master for the success of the project and for sustaining a scholarly career. This chapter discusses challenges in writing and ways to overcome these challenges in the process of writing papers in the social and behavioral sciences. Two main principles emphasized are that writing is (a) a skill and (b) a form of communication. Skills are developed through instruction, modeling, and practice. In terms of communication, the research report can be conceived as a narrative that tells a story. Sections of the chapter focus on identifying common barriers to writing and ways to overcome them, developing a coherent and appropriate storyline, understanding the essential elements of a research paper, and valuing and incorporating feedback.

Chapter 3 summarizes existing theories of election-related violence and introduces a theory of violence as a result of elite misperception. Existing theories rely upon the assumption that politicians choice of violence as an electoral tactic is based on an accurate assessment its relative costs and benefits. The theory of elite misperception, on the other hand, builds on two insights: (1) that voter backlash against violence is substantial and can cost politicians votes and (2) politicians frequently misjudge voter preferences – including with respect to violence – which can lead them to overestimate its benefits as an electoral tactic. The theory points to the difficulties politicians face in accurately assessing the impact of electoral tactics, as well as to the prevalence of cognitive biases that can cause them to misinterpret what information they have. It also highlights the importance of founding elections in determining which electoral tactics – violence included – are considered effective and worthy of emulation. With these insights in mind, the theory explains the incidence and persistence of election-related violence as a result of politicians misperceptions about voter preferences and the effects of violence on voting rather than the objective electoral benefits that violence provides.

This chapter analyzes the effects of violence – via coercion and persuasion – on voting. Existing research provides some evidence that violence can be used to prevent voters from turning out to vote. However, an analysis of the relationship between violence and turnout in Kenyan elections in the 1990s finds no relationship between violence on the one hand, and the aggregate level of voter registration or turnout on the other, suggesting that the relationship between violence, turn-out and electoral geography may be less straightforward than previously thought. On persuasion, the analysis finds consistent evidence of a large and broad-based voter backlash against violence, including among the coethnic voters that politicians rely on to win elections. Furthermore, while antagonistic ethnic rhetoric does appear to increase the likelihood of violence breaking out, it is not a useful strategy for mobilizing coethnic support. These results suggest that voter backlash against violence and violent rhetoric may undermine the efficacy of violence as an electoral tactic, and they help explain why violence is not associated with better outcomes for candidates in real elections.

The concept of freedom has been relatively neglected in anthropology. This chapter explores why and argues that freedom, especially when placed in tandem with care, is crucial for an anthropology of ethics, which is not focussed on rule-based morality but rather on the ways in which people work out what constitutes a life worth living and how to lead it. It makes this case both by drawing on emic invocations of freedom which often incorporate social critique and by analysing individual ethical choices via a family of concepts, which includes freedom, regard, care, and responsibility. This liberates ‘freedom’ from its associations with both individual autonomy and radical change, and enables us to focus more on its relational dimensions. If we think about ethical projects as attempts to move from an existing situation identified as unsatisfactory to a situation identified, on reflection, as better or good, we can see that an anthropology of ethics does not have to be confined to individual projects or religious projects of transcendence, but can take on board political projects of critique and transformation. We can then ask how people exercise the freedom or create the social conditions necessary to enact these projects.

An introduction to the key themes and arguments of the volume as a whole.

New product development processes need to be compliant to regulatory requirements, and this chapter highlights the salient processes and quality systems to put into place to achieve success. Project management is made simple with specific tools provided here. Customer feedback is channeled into specific product characteristics, and the right tools are shown in this chapter. The biopharma industry has statistics showing less than 10% of starting compounds succeed in reaching market approval, and this chapter explains what causes these failures. The key issues that have repeatedly caused failure during device and diagnostic product development are also pointed out. Ethical decisions have to be made during product development as shown in this chapter. Outsourcing is a real option due to the availability of many contract research and manufacturing organizations, and judicious use of this option is discussed in this chapter. Key milestones that reduce risk and show transition from early stage to preclinical prototype stages are reviewed here. Does the popular concept of minimum viable product in software development apply in biomedicine prototyping? Other similar questions that help the reader understand pitfalls and best practices are answered here.

This chapter takes a break from ICJ proceedings and turns to international trade litigation. In Brussels, Commission lawyers Jasper Schoonraad and Duncan Doyle are preparing the European Union’s defence in a WTO dispute about imports of palm oil. The chapter is devoted to the difficult business of making a persuasive case before an international court, and reviews the building blocks of a good written brief. The skilful collection and organization of factual evidence, the ability to formulate legal arguments that resonate with the judges’ sensibilities, and the reputation of counsel in their professional environment are the elusive hallmarks of success as an international litigator. However, what distinguishes an excellent brief is its internal logic. To make a truly strong case, the counsel must develop a tight and coherent narrative that provides the court with the means to comfortably rule in their client’s favour.

A key element of medieval and early modern medical practice was the creation of a positive attitude in the patient. To this end, a variety of persuasive strategies were employed, which are amply documented in available records of European medical texts, especially recipes. This chapter demonstrates through qualitative software analysis the conceptual categories related to persuasion and positive attitude, with special regard to their usage patterns, frequencies, and typical co-occurrences in the most common genre of sixteenth/seventeenth-century Medical Hungarian, that of medical recipes.

The study of persuasion in texts focuses on the means and strategies to alter the audience’s attitude and on bringing about a change in their minds. Persuasion can seldom be associated with linguistic phenomena or categories, or in other words, linguistic categories often contribute towards the persuasiveness of a text, carrying other functions at the same time. This chapter will investigate the ways in which persuasion is interlaced with the informative and instructive contents of Early Modern English medical recipes, looking beyond the customary recipe collections into other medical genres and the recipes embedded in their texts. The approach adopts metadiscourse analysis as a tool to map linguistic item inventories by which to anchor the classical concepts of persuasion to linguistic phenomena. The study suggests that persuasion in medical recipes resides in such linguistic phenomena that can be identified by metadiscourse categories. The approach provides a useful tool for triangulating one’s observations about the persuasiveness of a text. One of the trends emerging in the Early Modern English period is the increasing variety of metadiscourse classes used in recipes.

In addressing the question of how firms and governments can seek to manipulate behavior, this chapter considers a wider range of perspectives than the “Nudge” approach popularized by Thaler and Sunstein and the “Boost” approach that has recently focused on enhancing decision-making skills rather than on exploiting “supposedly irrelevant factors” that make consumers “predictably irrational.” It thus covers how shopping mall and in-store shopping environments are designed to divert attention to keep shoppers shopping via the “Gruen transfer” process. The chapter also covers the use of product-proliferation strategies aimed at creating “confusopoly” markets and devious strategies such as teaser offers and the shrouding of product add-ons. The highly influential “principles of persuasion” offered by Cialdini are considered, along with the role of sales scripts, emotion-triggering strategies and systems aimed at inducing “ego-depletion” to drive customers to spend more than they had planned. Finally, the chapter introduces economists to the notion of “demarketing,” i.e., strategies for dealing with time-wasting “customers” and excess demand for public services.