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How university students evaluate the grammatical style of nutrition messages?
Author(s) -
Unusan N.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
nutrition bulletin
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.933
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1467-3010
pISSN - 1471-9827
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-3010.2006.00557.x
Subject(s) - rhetorical question , style (visual arts) , statement (logic) , affect (linguistics) , psychology , rhetorical device , obesity , medicine , linguistics , communication , history , philosophy , archaeology
Summary This study was designed to investigate the response of university students to eight different types of nutritional messages, which encouraged consuming the recommended daily servings of fruit and vegetables to help reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and obesity. The formats used included offers, obligations, rhetorical questions using ‘how about’ or ‘why not’, a suggestive statement, a positive command and a positive command followed by a negative command and vice versa. The aim of the study was to determine if various grammatical styles of the same message could affect respondents’ views of their persuasiveness. A total of 1319 university students rated each message for persuasiveness. Positive commands using ‘could’, instructions which incorporated ‘should’ and rhetorical question using ‘how about’ were considered to be more persuasive than the other styles of nutrition messages ( P < 0.01).