Emotive use of language in annual municipal financial reports

Abstract

Each year a number of Canadian municipalities issue their annual financial report presenting to their respective residents the summary of the fiscal year. These reports facilitate emotive use of language impacting the formation of attitude of readers who are laypersons when it comes to statistics and accounting. This research study explored the influence of the emotive use of language on attitude formation (in both strength and valence) of the readers towards the creators of the reports. The conclusion is that the emotive use of language did affect both the strength and valence of attitude formation on the part of the reader. Conversely, the absence of the emotive use of language left the reader either without a specific attitude or caused the formation of negative attitude. The research also isolated eleven argumentation schemes, various rhetorical patterns used to affect reader’s attitude, and established the mechanisms and dynamics of their impact on attitude formation.