A Study on Persuasive Language in Personal Selling | Huang | International Journal of English Linguistics | CCSE

The present study, which is qualitative in nature, is an investigation into the persuasive language used in the interactive communication of personal selling based on Jef Verschueren’s linguistic Adaptation Theory and some important ideas of Game Theory. Within the framework of these theories, four personal selling cases were analyzed to reveal the interactive process of selling between the seller and the buyer as if they were engaged in a game in which the former used various persuasion strategies in different stages of selling to adapt to the physical, social and mental world of the latter. The two successful cases revealed that the seller’s sound adaptation to the three worlds of the buyer ultimately helped him/her to achieve a win-win situation while the two unsuccessful ones showed that the failure to adapt to any one of the three worlds led to a failed selling attempt and unproductive interaction between the two parties.