Rhetorical Strategy and Legitimacy: The Rhetor of Jeff Bezos

• Main Authors: Jessica Silviana Goenawan, 吳雅妮
• Other Authors: Min-Fen Tu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7cj377

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 經營管理全英語碩士學位學程 === 107 === This paper extends the role of rhetor’s in shaping company legitimacy through rhetorical strategy based on the entrepreneurial process. This study elaborates with Aristotle’s three types of rhetorical strategies – logos, pathos, ethos, and combines with Suchman’s three types of legitimacy – pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy for analyzing the data. This research is based on a single and exploratory case study of Amazon company and Jeff Bezos as the rhetor. This study adopts content analysis of Amazon’s letter to shareholders from 1997 to 2016 and used for the primary data in the analysis and follows several steps in order to appeal more accurate result. This article then resulting that during 20 years of Amazon development, rhetor wants to achieve pragmatic legitimacy from the audiences with three combinations of rhetorical strategies: pathos-value, pathos-need and logos-evidence strategy.