ChatGPT-Generated Rhetoric: Developing Pedagogical Uses for L2 Instructors

Abstract

The recent proliferation of AI tools has forced L2 educators to adapt their pedagogy at an unprecedented pace. While the debate on whether or not to utilize AI tools in curricula continues, an unexamined facet of these tools is how proficient they are with ‘human-like’ rhetorical writing skills. Therefore, this qualitative study is framed by the research question: Does ChatGPT exhibit the ability to use rhetoric in various genres of persuasive writing? Specifically, the study aims to determine if ChatGPT can produce micro-rhetorical techniques (e.g., language techniques such as the use of tricolons, alliteration, or metaphors) (see Rowland, 2019) and the more complicated macro approaches to rhetoric (e.g., message-framing approaches such as positive framing or negative framing) (see Fairhurst, 2011). To address this question, a range of written genres were generated and analyzed using MAXQDA 2020 software: academic essays, job application letters, editorials, advertisements, political campaign speeches, and love letters. Results indicate that ChatGPT can replicate human use of rhetoric across a range of written genres. This poster presentation provides a forum for participants to discuss the two key implications of this finding. Firstly, written texts from many genres can be mass-produced and provided to students to have them identify the uses of rhetoric. Secondly, students can be challenged with improving the rhetorical approach of these AI-generated texts. By analyzing the rhetorical techniques and message-framing approaches generated by ChatGPT this study seeks to proffer conclusions with potential pedagogical implications for rhetoric and L2 instructors in higher education.



Author Information
Richard Miles, Nanzan University, Japan

Paper Information
Conference: BCE2024
Stream: Foreign Languages Education & Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)

This paper is part of the BCE2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Miles R. (2025) ChatGPT-Generated Rhetoric: Developing Pedagogical Uses for L2 Instructors ISSN: 2435-9467 – The Barcelona Conference on Education 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 17-26) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-9467.2024.3
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-9467.2024.3


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon