Abstract:
Parliamentary committee reports emanate from choices and collective decisions
on what action to take in response to emerging situations. Because of competing
interests, among legislators; parliamentary committee reports (PCRs) require
clear strategies of persuasion, in order to unfold their deliberative and persuasive
goals. This study analysed the rhetorical appeals used in selected Kenyan
parliamentary committee reports advanced to achieve the genre’s communicative
purpose. The study involved an examination of rhetorical strategies of
persuasion used in PCRs including logos, ethos as well as pathos and is premised
on Aristotle’s Rhetoric art of persuasion theory. Descriptive research design was
used with corpora being generated from fifteen parliamentary committee reports
sampled five each from selected County Assemblies, the National Assembly and
the Senate. Results of this study indicated that different rhetorical appeals are
blended and focused on convincing and persuading legislators to adopt PCRs.
The findings offer insights on the interplay between deliberative discourse styles,
rhetorical persuasive patterns and contribute to the pool of knowledge on genre,
communication and rhetorical analysis.
