Echoes of Persuasion: The Effect of Euphony in Persuasive Communication

TL;DR

This paper investigates how phonetic features, specifically euphony, influence persuasion across various domains, revealing that sound devices positively impact persuasive effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a computational model of euphony and demonstrates its significant role in persuasive language through analysis and prediction across multiple datasets.

Findings

Phonetic devices enhance persuasiveness in language.

Euphony correlates positively with persuasive effectiveness.

Sound features improve prediction of persuasive sentences.

Abstract

While the effect of various lexical, syntactic, semantic and stylistic features have been addressed in persuasive language from a computational point of view, the persuasive effect of phonetics has received little attention. By modeling a notion of euphony and analyzing four datasets comprising persuasive and non-persuasive sentences in different domains (political speeches, movie quotes, slogans and tweets), we explore the impact of sounds on different forms of persuasiveness. We conduct a series of analyses and prediction experiments within and across datasets. Our results highlight the positive role of phonetic devices on persuasion.