A Textual Analysis of Turkish Advice Letters in the Construction of a Persuasive Agony Aunt

Abstract

As a representative form of popular culture, the continuation of advice letters written by the agony aunts in newspapers can demonstrate society's needs. Despite its commonality in everyday life, advice can be termed as a ‘complex and interesting speech act’ (Hyland and Hyland 2012) since sometimes it does not end in one sentence like other speech acts (e.g., requesting, apologies and thanking) (Trosborg 1995). Based on data from a collection of 100 advice letters written by the Turkish agony aunt gathered from the years 2020-2021, a textual meta discursivee analysis of advice letters is conducted to evaluate the types and frequencies of textual markers to find out how the agony aunt utilizes these textual elements to put forward her arguments. The findings reveal that 1) logical markers are extremely essential for persuading advice seekers and 2) adversatives and additives are necessary for providing a logical basis when advising advice seekers. The paper concludes by indicating that textual markers are essential for persuading advice seekers and potential readers when giving advice.