Persvazivní prvky v českých nakladatelských anotacích
Persuasive elements in Czech publisher summaries

Summary/Abstract: The text aims to analyse how the style of official book summaries seeks to leave a favourable impression on the potential reader and buyer. Summaries made in three eras of the Czech literature have been compared, namely, in the First Czechoslovak Republic (with summaries taken from around 1930), in the communist era (with summaries taken from around 1970), and in the contemporary era (with summaries from 2022). The oldest summaries may seem almost naive in their persuasive strategies, i.e., using unambiguous adjectives, such as “good” or “moving”. The communist era summaries also make use of these laudatory adjectives, sometimes even more evocative, and emphasise them with ostentatiously “objective” statements explaining why the said publication agrees with the socialist worldview. The contemporary strategies are more subtle, and the individual summaries differ strongly, aiming at different groups of potential readers by adjusting their respective styles to the target audience’s tastes.

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