Gender differences in the use of SCREAM Rhetorical devices displayed on video presentations: (An analysis of undergraduate students' persuasive presentations)

Abstract

Delivering persuasive presentation is a challenging task for the university students. One of the difficult parts is grasping the attention of audiences during the critical situations, such as in the early morning or after the lunch break. At the situations, students are not paying more attention to any speeches or presentations occurred in the classroom because of some lapses of attention span such as poor listening, yawns, blurred visual images, and noisy situations. For that reasons, the study seeks to investigate the most preferred SCREAM Rhetorical devices used by male and female students when doing persuasive presentation and verify whether gender differences play a role in the way the male and female students exploited SCREAM Rhetorical devices to persuade the audiences. To explore the application of SCREAM Rhetorical devices, this study involved sixteen English Business Presentation students; eight males and eight females who were randomly selected to record the business presentation in video as multimedia learning device. Then, the presentations through the videos were analyzed using Windingland (2012) SCREAM taxonomy that comprises Rhetorical devices into six types: Simile, Contrast, Rhyme, Echo, Alliteration, and Metaphor. The significant findings proved that the presentations displayed on the videos showed that all respondents executed SCREAM Rhetorical devices. The gender differences influenced the SCREAM rhetorical devices used. Interestingly, of six devices, Echo is the most preferred device exploited in the students' persuasive presentation.