Abstract
While self-improvement books are a widely read genre, linguists have not given them the attention they deserve. The main goal of this book is to explore how persuasion is realised in self-improvement books, and how it is influenced by ideology. This chapter explores an overview of the concept of ideology. The chapter then introduces the concept of genre and discusses how genres are governed by values. The discussion draws on the research literature and provides examples from a dataset of self-improvement books. The chapter also describes the dataset of self-improvement books used for illustration throughout the book and the interview participants whose views informed the analysis.
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Koay, J. (2019). Introduction. In: Persuasion in Self-improvement Books. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12149-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12149-5_1
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